The numbers around him fell as the names rang out in great staccato bursts from the podium. One after another, Larin then Shelton then Alashe then Besler and suddenly what was happening? Was this happening? Could it?

The MLS draft is not a heavily attended event by prospects. There is typically a two-deep line of those uncomfortable metal-ringed convention chairs filled with perhaps 20 or 30 players who showed with the chance of a first round selection. But this is not the NFL. The event is typically broadcast on ESPN2 for perhaps a round, or maybe Univision, or maybe it’s merely an internet stream. It is a big day for these players – the biggest, really – but to deny the relative lack of pomp here would be to deny the event itself exists.

As the sun rose over the freezer-chilled streets of Philadelphia on Jan. 15, 2015, Roldan had more hope than most of going inside the top five. For one, he carried in a Generation adidas tag with him, a guarantee MLS clubs could could use to omit him from their roster count. The fact that Roldan’s class was the smallest in the initiative’s 20-year history – a scant five players – put an even heavier bull’s-eye on each.

Roldan had been part of Washington’s rise to the fore, and famously stumbled upon by UW coach Jamie Clark playing on a side field at the Surf Cup before most anyone outside SoCal had ever known he existed. In 2013, Roldan spearheaded UW’s first Pac-12 title in over a decade as the nation’s best freshman. Anyone who watched him could see it. Could sense he had more to give.

So in 2015 when the draft arrived, a rippling shallow pool behind consensus No. 1 Cyle Larin, Roldan was considered by many to be the second-best prospect in the entire field. He certainly was by this site. What Roldan perhaps could not have anticipated was that a poor showing at the desultory MLS Combine – an event at which he was deployed out of position for most of the week – would pull the thread on the doubts that have swirled above his professional status for the majority of his career.

So the names kept coming while Roldan sat, the chairs thinning around him while team after team passed. Larin. Then Khiry Shelton at No. 2. Romario Williams. Fatai Alashe. Nick Besler. Alex Bono. Matt Polster. Zach Steinberger. Clement Simonin. Connor Hallisey. Skylar Thomas. Saad Abdul-Salaam. Tim Parker. Axel Sjoberg. Otis Earle.

Every single one, with the lone exception of Hallisey, headlined their scouting wrap sheets with size, speed or strength. Eleven of the 15 were either goalkeepers, defenders or defensive midfielders.

Roldan has always been small, a skittering water strider, and in college he more often than anything played the No. 10, a position most agreed he was not cut out to carry in the pros. Multiple front office sources involved with draft day decision-making told me after that draft that concerns about Roldan’s ability to withstand the league mixed with uncertainty about his position precipitated his slide. And so it was the hammer instead of the feather.

The Sounders, who’d openly scouted Roldan during his two years at UW, knew better. It’s why they slid into the first round thanks to the tireless work from recently appointed GM Garth Lagerwey. He engineered a trade at No. 16 with his former club RSL, which didn’t have a high value target on the board that late in the first round.

Since then, Roldan’s quietly gone about the business of becoming a vital starter in a crowded Sounders midfield. In a season and a half, Roldan’s compiled 2,856 minutes, three goals and four assists. All three of those goals and half the assists have come in Seattle’s last seven games. As a primary holding midfielder in a 4-2-3-1.

His performance on Sunday in a 3-1 win over Portland was the eye-catcher: a drawn penalty leading to Clint Dempsey’s opener and a goal off a header to put it away.

But it was perhaps the play that didn’t worm its way into highlight reels that defined his night.

Roldan completed 89 percent of his passes on Sunday night, a higher percentage than everyone on the field who went the full 90, including Ozzie Alonso, who usually occupies that pole position. Paradoxically, it was even higher in Portland’s half at a staggering 92 percent, meaning he’s picking his moments to get forward more shrewdly than ever.

His defensive spadework too shouldn’t be overlooked. Over the last four weeks, the Sounders have basically frozen out the likes of Kaka, Giovani dos Santos, Robbie Keane, Javier Morales and now both Valeri and Nagbe. That’s down to the preternatural pairing between Alonso and Roldan, who’s been brimming with confidence in just about every aspect of the game.

He is not merely playing better than most U23 players in MLS. He is playing better than most players.

To watch Roldan maneuver and position his markers with possession at his feet is to watch a balletic salsa dancer manipulate his partner on a crowded dance floor. It almost looks directed, like someone is positioned in the stadium rafters and adroitly moving him into open plains through the herds of stampeding buffalo with a joystick. Because there are two things you’ll notice immediately about Roldan: he is a bulldog on possession and he rarely puts a pass where it should not go. To average 47 passes per game and complete 84 percent of them is no small thing. Not for a 21-year-old professional, and not for a team that couldn’t score for four months.

The great sadness in Roldan’s career has naught to do with his club status. Roldan is a vital cog for a Seattle team that suddenly looks like a playoff contender, every bit as important as the TAM-level midfielder named Alonso sitting next to him in the hole in front of the back four. If he keeps this level churning he will find opportunities come to him.

The sadness is in his moth-eaten U.S. national team resume. Because in some ways it still feels as though he’s on that chair, watching players leave him one after the next.

U.S. Soccer’s YNT system can be glacially slow at identifying prospects outside the normal modes of talent conveyance. But they can take something of a pass for not seeing Roldan earlier than his upperclassman years at El Rancho High School, tucked away in Pico Rivera between the 605 and East LA. Roldan was a high level youth player with low level visibility until late on due to the fact that he never played in the Development Academy. So it took a Gatorade National Player of the Year award to wake everyone up.

U.S. Soccer was unmoved, for whatever reason. Roldan was never folded into the YNT system until, at Sigi Schmid’s urging, Tab Ramos pulled Roldan into a U20 MNT camp in January 2014. He played a total of 90 minutes over two matches against Qatar and Croatia in Austria before heading back for his sophomore year at UW.

He had not played a match for the U.S. before. And he has not played one since.

It was thought Roldan might sneak into the 2015 U20 World Cup roster, but he was chosen as an alternate. He was ignored for Olympic qualifiers later that year, the final bulwark before being released to eligibility for intermittent U23 camps and, ultimately, full national team opportunities.

Why Roldan’s been frozen out of so many national team opportunities is something of a mystery considering many of the players called in ahead of him have done less on professional stages. And the American window might be closing. Roldan’s long said he’d prefer to play for the U.S., the country of his birth, but his mother is Salvadoran and his father is Guatemalan.

And the latter door might be creaking open.

Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan confirms interest of Guatemalan national team //t.co/gF4F8G63EF pic.twitter.com/bNyBXb7MOO — Matt Pentz (@mattpentz) August 3, 2016

Klinsmann’s never spoken publicly about Roldan, but he might have to act quickly if he hopes to rectify the laggardly identification and incorporation of one of the best American U23 central midfielders available. Guatemala will find him if the U.S. passes, and the U.S. cannot afford to pass on a player who’s grown up playing next to Alonso, one of the great holding midfielders in MLS history, and now Nico Lodeiro, one of the most creatively expressive players the league has seen in some time.

It is frankly a falling down of the system itself that Roldan has only had two – two – caps ever for any U.S. youth national team, and both were in friendlies before he hit his now year-long hot streak as a highly visible professional player in the hottest soccer market in the country.

Roldan has been far too easy to overlook for the entirety of his career. Call him up from the chair now. See what happens.