Laroux was actually a second round pick!

Again it’s not like all these dudes are above average starters. But every first round draft has a good number of quality bench players, and a couple of legit stars. A roughy one in 4 shot at an MLS caliber player might not be better than u22’s, but it’s not far off, and there are some homeruns!

2022:
Ben Bender
Roman Celentano
Patrick Shulte
Ian Murphy
Simon Becher
Tani Oluwaseyi
Anthony Markanich

7/28

2023 (banger class):
Moïse Bombito
Duncan McGuire
Stephan Afrifa
Patrick Ageymang
Max Arfsten
Emeka Eneli
Noel Caliskan
CJ Fodrey

8/29 with a number of huge transfer fees coming from this group!

2024:
Logan Farrington
Tyrese Spicer
Malachi Jones
Yannick Bright
Kalani Kossa-Rienzi
Jayden Hibbert

6/29

Also had some really strong second round guys in:
Leo Alfonso
Beau Leroux

2025: we can’t fully judge yet bc some dudes will be draft and stash or sent to MLSNP, but even then:
Manu Duah
Tate Johnson
Max Floriani
Ian Pilcher

All got a significant number of starts and 3 of those 4 were just straight up good in MLS this year.
And for good teams!
4/30

The average u22 player is a mediocre mls player. I’d argue none of the u22’s that made it to the semi’s are especially impressive except Miami’s and let’s be real they recruit from a very different pool simply because they have the incentive of playing with Messi.

For sure. But overall it’s still a bigger source of talent for mls than the u22 program. Obviously any single draft pick is is not as valuable but overall it’s a much more significant source.

Even more wild is the fact that there was only one more u22 than North Carolina Tar Heel

youtu.be/hYTQ7__NNDI?...

If you look at the numbers, there are huge diminishing returns on DP’s, the top 30 most highly paid DP’s are not meaningfully more productive than the rest, despite accounting for an enormous increase in cost. Albert Rusnak, for example, would be above average if he were in that category.

In fact the studies show it makes you worse. Although it’s a mild correlation and the last major academic study on it was quite a while ago. I think it’s probably a wash and there just happens to have been a couple gargantuan spenders that sucked (Toronto). I cited it in the spending article.

It strips out everything that is queer, even more so than the show, and leaves a weird story without point that doesn't have the convictions to talk about the subject matter it invokes.

Like, between the two you couldn't write a better metaphor for liberal inability to deal with crimes of the state. It transforms a work that is deeply, uncomfortably about the mass killing by inaction that was AIDS into a story about ever creeping fascism that is averted by vibes and good intentions