MLS expansion draft on the horizon for Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps

With the MLS regular season set to end next weekend, the eight clubs not competing in the playoffs will begin turning attention to the 2011 roster and the expansion draft, which will supply 10 players apiece to the Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps.

The draft will take place Nov. 24, three days after MLS Cup (and the day before Thanksgiving). The 16 current clubs must submit their list of 11 protected players by Nov. 22, giving the expansion teams about 48 hours to sift through approximately 175 available players. Portland and Vancouver will alternate selections through 10 rounds (20 players total). Portland has the first overall pick; Vancouver will choose first in the regular draft in January.

No current team will lose more than two players; some might not lose any. In 2004, the last time two teams entered the league in the same year, an existing club was subject to losing three players -- D.C. United, for example, said goodbye to Ezra Hendrickson, Thiago Martins and Kevin Ara. The top picks that year were Los Angeles midfielder Arturo Torres (Chivas USA) and Chicago midfielder Andy Williams (Real Salt Lake).

Here is DCU's current roster with player status.

MLS has been kind of enough to share some of the guidelines for this year's draft:



*Generation Adidas and homegrown players are exempt and do not need to be on the 11-man protected list. (Each fall, MLS reviews GA and homegrown players and decides whether they retain their status for another season.) All other developmental players are subject to selection, unless they are protected.

*When a club loses a player, it may move one unprotected player to the protected list.

*A club can expose a designated player to the expansion draft, unless the player has a no-trade clause in his contract. In that case, the player must be among the 11 protected.

*Protecting a player does not obligate a team to exercise a contract option; a deal can still be renegotiated.

*If a developmental player is selected, he must be offered a senior roster slot.

*As for international players, I will let MLS explain it. (FYI, green-card holders are not considered international.)

Clubs are restricted in the number of international player(s) that they may make available. Clubs may make available a number of international players equal to their total number of international players minus three, provided that if a club has three or fewer international players it may make available not more than one. For purposes of this expansion process, for U.S.-based clubs, any non-domestic U.S. player would count as an international and, for Toronto FC, any non-domestic U.S. player or non-domestic Canadian players would count as an international.

Got it?

A wrinkle this year is the new collective bargaining agreement, which allows greater freedom to free agents to move to another MLS club without the previous employer retaining rights and requiring compensation. This could affect a club's decision-making pertaining to the protected list. In the past, a team might have protected a free agent for his compensation value. Now, there is no incentive to protect a free agent that a club doesn't plan to re-sign.

