LOS ANGELES – A forward, a goalkeeper and a midfielder were Minnesota United's 2017 MLS SuperDraft haul on Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
After selecting highly-touted UCLA striker Abu Danladi with the first selection of the draft, the Loons selected Wake Forest goalkeeper Alec Ferrell at No. 23 overall, the first pick of the second round. Minnesota then traded their third pick of the day, which was originally No. 25 overall, to the Philadelphia Union, in exchange for $50,000 in general allocation money for the 2018 season and the No. 42 pick in this year's draft. With that pick, they took Delaware midfielder Thomas de Villardi, a Paris-born youth product of Ligue 1 side Guingamp.
Minnesota United currently have 15 players listed on their roster, including Thursday's selections, and while sporting director Manny Lagos emphasized the six-week window for the club to build out their roster, head coach Adrian Heath acknowledged the time crunch up ahead.
"We’re a little bit behind everybody else, but we’re excited about who we’ve brought in,” Heath told assembled reporters at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
“Rather than just take players for the sake of it on the roster, I want to make sure we get the right ones,” he added.
Lagos told reporters the team was targeting more players "within the spine," particularly in both attack and goal in the weeks to come.
"Every time we add a big piece like [Danladi], it sets in motion some of the other projects we're working on," Lagos told MLSsoccer.com. "This is big, it helps us navigate our next three or four big signings."
While Danladi will grab the lion's share of the headlines for Minnesota on the day, for obvious reasons, Heath spoke about Ferrell, a Midwestern native, as a player who was in high demand around the league.
"When we took him, we had two or three texts from other clubs who were very disappointed," he quipped. "I think we've taken the best young striker and the best goalkeeper out of the draft, so I'm really pleased."
As for the trade that led to de Villardi's selection, Heath was confident the midfielder would be on the board at No. 42 and was happy to get the allocation money from the deal. Lagos explained the deal as "we look at the roster building not just in one year, but we have to think out one, three, five-year planning."
One area where Minnesota has not yet made any moves is in signing Designated Players to the roster. Lagos said the tag was less important than finding players who provided the right fit for the team.
"In all honestly, the approach for us is not to look at the DP as a number but just what makes sense to us in our roster right now and get competitive in the right way. For us, we're just really excited about some names we have for the competitive side, and that may be a DP player, that may not."
The Loons' brain trust emphasized the need to find players who were eager to play in Minnesota as fundamental to their approach.
"At the end of the day, we want to make sure we get guys who want to be here, who want to create this identity that we have," Lagos said.
"It really is a special day for Minnesotans, and I hope they can embrace that."
