No, I haven't gone over to the dark side. I was just intrigued with the idea that poorer clubs can get first pick of top players in order to produce a more level playing field. And the picked players even manage to smile. Can you imagine Robin van Persie grinning as he slips on a Blackburn Rovers shirt? Just had a ghastly image of Portsmouth picking Rickie!! If you could get a player on draft, who would you pick? I might go for the already mentioned RVP, but perhaps another top keeper or CB.
This is not how it works. First pick goes to the worst team from the previous season, not the poorest. The first draft pick is generally the highest paid player in that year group, so in this instance. RVP would be delighted to be the first pick, even if it was Blackburn. The whole way the sport system in America is set up shows how far behind we are.
I used the word poorer to mean the worst team...bad choice of words. I do find it strange in a country that equates wealth with success that they have ended up with a system that prevents rich clubs like ManU etc winning the league every year. I like the idea that it wouldn't always be the same team and that strategic buying plays such a big part. Still would never watch it though
No such thing as "poorest" team financially because of salary cap. The NFL draft is brilliant, it keeps the field relatively even and is an incredibly exciting spectacle - last night was awesome, can't wait until tonight. Obviously it (and salary caps) wouldn't work in England, but hey ho.
NFL is my second sport to footsie now. Tampa bays my team who have got a couple of gems in the draft so far. The sport works as they only have 32 teams in the league. Most of them have been successful at some point in there history, some more so than others. It's meant to be a league that doesn't follow a boring policy where you know roughly who will rech the divisional finals like we do here. But it would basically be impossible now to implement the structure in our footie here. Good luck to Luck next season, a part Brit being no.1 pick in the draft is some achievement.
Not pretending to be an expert on American sports, but there seems to be a large tactical element to their most popular sports...hence their time outs etc. Think the British prefer more straight forward games. Horses for courses.
It would be difficult for any first draft type system to work in the UK because we don't have the college systems that they do. Having said that, I would welcome any system that enables a team to win on merit rather than simply being able to afford the best players. That is why I admire Barcalona. Of course they can afford the best but so many of them come through the ranks. Back in the early 80's we often used to have over half the team as home-grown. I can recall counting as many as 8 at one time.
This is the way that Cortese sees Saints going. He knows that to compete with clubs far richer than we are, you have to have a good academy system bringing through a team that learnt together and play together. He said during an interview at Staplewood that he wanted to create an ethos where players would not want to be anywhere else.
That's perfectly correct, hence why I enjoy watching the NFL anytime I can. As for draft picks.....I'd have Kompany to bolster our defence.
As I understand it (I could be wrong), the draft only applies to newly 'graduated', so to speak, youngsters, so you wouldn't be able to choose someone else's best player. Once they're contracted to the team, they belong to that team. So to apply this to 'soccer', it would be like having an independent academy league and the premier league teams would get to pick players from the pool of graduates every year. They have a similar draft system in the MLS in America, if you're interested in how it would apply to soccer, taking players from colleges, generally, like they do in gridiron. It wouldn't really work in most countries though because, as Lff says, they don't have the well-developed college sports leagues they have in the states. We wouldn't have any incentive to develop our own youth players if they were just going to be drafted by some other team.
How about Daft picks, that would also make it interesting. Sir Alex, your new signing is........... Anthony Pulis.
I'm a huge Indy fan so naturally I'm very excited! He's not actually part Brit, just spent his childhood in London Look out for Jack Crawford, too, he's projected round 5 and is 100% English. Tom Wort (Oklahoma Sooners ILB) is English too (brought up in Crawley), he's projected first round next year!
I think the draft system is fabulous. That however is pretty much the only thing that's fabulous about the NFL. Fran mentioned the timeouts making the sport highly tactical. I suppose that's true to a degree but it's far more to do with sponsorship and advertising, making the whole spectacle one huge set of adverts. It's impossibly tedious. That said, baseball and basketball run it very close but they are equally awash with advertising and I believe that this detracts from any sport's natural evolution. Remember in USA 94, the hosts had a proposal on the table to FIFA to change the game to four quarters! This wasn't tactical, it was so Budweiser could get more air time.
What a horrible idea, America is a horrible place for sport imo Should not be brought to England under any circumstances
I strong appose the draft system. I would struggle to enjoy any success of my team as in the back of my mind would always know all these players are going to be taken by everyone else before next season. I great thing about supporting saints right now is we have the infrastructure and business model to continuously progress up the world of football Also, enough people moan about players having no loyalties to clubs as it is, this certainly wouldn't help. You would also get 'plastic fans' appearing during the good seasons and empty seats for the rest
The ignorance is astounding. Learn what the draft is before you slag it off like this. Why is it a horrible idea?
