Never has it been more difficult for players to join Major League Soccer via the draft.
While the trend isn’t anything new – after all, teams passed on picking for 27 of the 104 possible picks – it’s easy to see already just two weeks into the 2020 MLS season.
With preseason have come and gone, of the 77 players that were picked in one of the four rounds of the 2020 MLS Draft, only 20 actually signed on with the team that drafted them. Thirty-four players that were drafted are now signed with teams in the USL League One or Championship.
Attrition in a draft is natural in any major sports league, especially in MLS where there is a broad gap between college soccer and the pro game, not to mention the academy initiatives that are a key piece of building out a roster. And it's worth noting that MLS (and the USL) will now be on break for at least a month as of publication.
Regardless, here's a brief roundup of the players that signed from the college game to MLS teams.
