Expansion has brought a wealth of benefits to Major League Soccer, reaching new fans and broadening the league’s appeal. But the expansion draft can inflict a bit of collateral damage on the players caught up in the frenetic deal-making that it often inspires.
Jordan Graye could be a poster child for this phenomenon. Drafted by his beloved hometown club D.C. United a year ago, the University of North Carolina graduate surprised many by logging 1,662 minutes for DC as a rookie, and was duly snatched up by Portland when United left him exposed in last month’s expansion draft.
“I looked at what Portland and Vancouver were looking for in the draft, and what Portland was looking for describes me perfectly,” Graye told MLSsoccer.com in a recent phone interview. “So I really wasn’t surprised at all. I actually told the coaches at D.C. United: ‘you know they’re going to pick me, right?’ And they were like, ‘we’ve got a feeling that they don’t.’”
[inlinenode:307354]“But he became trade bait almost immediately as the Timbers hunted down another 23-year-old fullback – one with a much glitzier resume, former Arsenal academy product and England youth international Kerrea Gilbert – and this week Graye was sent to the Houston Dynamo for a fourth-round pick in the 2014 SuperDraft.
The offseason upheaval looks like the final jolt of a rookie campaign that taught Graye plenty of stern lessons about life as a professional. He’s taking nothing for granted until it’s time to suit up again in the spring.
"People get traded left and right so I’m not really worrying about anything until preseason starts,” he said. “Then wherever I am by then, that’s where I’m going to go, you know? I feel like I’m kind of indifferent towards it now. I was upset at first but now it’s like, this is what happens.
“I don’t really get too comfortable in any situation anymore, because you could be in one place, and then be in another place. You’ve just got to play it by ear.”
Yet his abrupt departure from DC, the club he supported as a child and played for at the academy level, still stings. A ten-year-old Graye attended United’s 1997 MLS Cup victory at a cold, rainy RFK Stadium and two years he later won the league’s “Dribble Pass & Score” skills competition at MLS Cup 1999 in Foxborough, Mass., just before the Black-and-Red defeated Los Angeles for their third league championship in four years.
“I feel like I’m one of the first generations of kids who remembers what MLS was like back in the beginning,” he said. “I feel like that’s the hardest part, because the only team I ever wanted to play for was D.C. United. That’s what I grew up on. I played for all their youth teams. It was really the only jersey in MLS I wanted to wear.”
Fit, fast and attack-minded, Graye showed real promise for United in 2010. But after a few youthful errors led to gut-wrenching losses and at season’s end, he says he was told that he would be “on the outside looking in” when it came to next year’s starting lineup. He immediately hired a personal trainer and sounds eager to prove his worth when action resumes in the months ahead.
[inlinenode:312897]“[United] were trying to use me as a reserve player for a good portion of next year, and I wasn’t trying to do that,” he said. “Because I have a lot more aspirations than I feel like what they have planned for me. I can’t be on the bench. That’s why it was probably a good idea that I moved on, even though I would love to play for D.C. United.”
Graye remains confident in his own abilities and feels like he carried more than his share of blame for DC’s defensive breakdowns. But he believes head coach Ben Olsen and his squad will rebound strongly from this season’s struggles, just as he looks to do the same in Houston, which he calls “the best team I could go to.”
“The longer I was a pro, the more I started to really understand that, it’s not like people have anything personal against you, it’s that peoples’ jobs are on the line,” Graye said. “If they feel like they trust someone else more than you, then they’re going to go with that person to secure their future.
“I have got no ill feelings towards any of the [DC] coaches or front office, because I definitely understand where they’re coming from,” he said, before adding, “I just feel like anyone who watched me play knows that I add something that a lot of people don’t give.
“I think I just needed one year under my belt.”
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