UPDATE: The Sounder also acquired UCLA midfielder Andy Rose from Real Salt Lake in exchange for Leone Cruz, a second round pick a year ago who did not make the team.

There is an excitement offered to watching a rough diamond polished, in tracking and following their progress. When Seattle Sounders FC picked Tim Pontius, Jason Banton, Abdul Aman and Wes Feighner, four more potential diamonds were picked. One of these may make the squad ala Mike Fucito and Josh Ford. Others are likely to go the way Jamel Wallace or Seedy Bah. Of the many players brought in to try to make the 2012 squad, these lesser knowns have to show just a bit more.

In Tim Pontius Seattle grabbed a defender who has an amazing goal to his name already. He's also the younger brother of D.C. United's Chris Pontius. The UC Santa Barbara player will be reunited with a backline mate in Michael Tetteh. His ability, not the rare goal or familial relations, will be why he makes the team.

Banton bumped around various teams in England. Already fairly popular on Twitter, he'll have to show the promise that had him in systems like Liverpool and Arsenal as opposed to the roughness that caused Leicester City to loan him down to Burton Albion.

Abdul Aman played only one season with the University of Washington Huskies scoring 2 goals in 11 appearances. Ethiopian born and Seattle raised Aman joins two other drafted Huskies (Finch and Hustedt) as well as Brent Richards, Andrew Duran and three other Creighton players coached by Jamie Clark who will have the opportunity to make 2012 MLS rosters.

Wes Feighner is out of Cal Poly SLO. The left back was a multi-year captain at the central coast school. Keeping track of his academic awards can be difficult as they are numerous. He was also recognized with a CLASS award for his combination of classroom, character, community and competition.

Each of these players are rough. If they weren't, they wouldn't be Supplemental Draft picks. Each with a different appeal, you have the oppurtunity to 'discover' one and track their progress through what could be a short stay in training or a multi-year career when you can tell your seat mates "I first heard of that guy back in ..."

Major League Soccer's Supplemental Draft is not televised, but only streamed. The teams have retreated from Kansas City to their hometowns as many already opened training camps. This draft is held via conference call and can be followed via MLSSoccer.com's live stream.

For the real draftniks there are a few known players left. Jeremiah profiled several over at SBNation.com/soccer, while one of our readers filled out a couple more. With the shrinking of the SuperDraft to two rounds, but the expansion of the league to 19 teams, don't think of players taken today as Supplemental Draft picks. Instead think of them as picks number 39 and up, particularly when comparing them to past drafts. So while Mike Fucito was picked in the 4th round (46) of the SuperDraft, this year he would be the 1st round, 7th pick.

Consider this your live thread. We'll have updates on Sounders activity as it happens. The draft starts at 11AM, but the Montreal Impact did the right thing and already announced they will be picking some Canadian.

To the outside observer, the 2012 MLS SuperDraft seemed to be breaking almost perfectly for the Seattle Sounders. Despite holding the No. 15 pick in the first round, three Generation Adidas players were available to them when their turn finally came around.

Forward Dom Dwyer, who many seemed to think was high on the Sounders' list, was one of those players. Enzo Martinez, a player that would have seemed to be a nice fit if the Sounders wanted more of an attack-minded central midfielder, was also there. Tyler Polak, a leftback who played in the Creighton defense that had allowed just five goals all season, was, too, available.

The Sounders, it would seem anyway, had an embarrassment of riches from which to choose.

Instead, they picked none of the above. Rather than make a pick that would have been universally praised, they selected Andrew Duran, a player only the hardest core of hard core college soccer observers knew anything about.

At first blush, the pick seemed odd on numerous levels. They had passed on an opportunity to take any one of three players who would not count against the cap. They had opted against picking players league scouts had apparently thought highly enough of to entice them to leave school early. Even worse, Duran's MLS-distributed biography showed just one full season and noted that he suffered a serious knee injury in 2010.

Judging the pick just on those criteria, though, would be folly. Clearly, the Sounders saw something different in Duran than what shows up on a stat sheet. Just as importantly, the Sounders also saw something that doesn't seem so obvious to many draft observers: Generation Adidas players are a bigger risk than they often seem.

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With neither of Seattle Sounders FC's MLS SuperDraft picks being from Generation Adidas nor pre-signed seniors or internationals the two players are going to have to fight to make the tight roster. A roster that may get even tighter before they report as General Manager Adrian Hanauer said during today's conference call there are "other deals that are possibly pending or getting close." This means that though one can guess at what Andrew Duran and Babayele Sodade bring to the table, their additions are not assured. Hanauer also said, "Duran and Sodade will have to come in and work hard coming out of this draft. We have a very deep and strong team and we hope they prove to us that they belong on the roster and ultimately earn minutes and have an impact on the team."

If they do make the squad they bring different things. Sodade is a similar style of player to O'Brian White, who it is clear the team is stilled concerned about coming back to regular play. Three different times Coach Sigi Schmid mentioned White's health as a reason Seattle looked to Sodade who Schmid describes as;

... [a] big body. He’s a big presence up front, he’s got good pace. Obviously for us, one of our concerns as we go into this season is the recovery of O’Brian White, so we’ve got some forwards. We went on the move and we got [Sammy] Ochoa, but Sodade is different. He’s a much bigger body than Sammy. He showed well at the combine, he’s had a good career at UAB and he’s the kind of player who could be a surprise guy like [Kansas City forward] C.J. Sapong was last year.

This is a bit of a return from the style of play which ended Seattle season. Schmid noted that hold up play isn't limited to tall, bulky man mentioning that Mike Fucito held the ball up well, but with the team losing Nate Jaqua and White's question there was need for not just a high forward, but a target type. He also mentioned that Sodade was the only one like that in the draft.

While that will be a return to more extensive target play, the 15th pick of Duran continues a new style of defense for the team. A style that started with the losses of Tyson Wahl and James Riley and continued with additions of Adam Johansson and Christian Sivebaek. While Duran is much more of a centerback, his style is composure on ball and smart passing.

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In the second round of the MLS SuperDraft the Seattle Sounders went for an athletic goal scoring forward in UAB's Babayele Sodade. Standing 6'3 and 195 Sodade's test for the vertical at the Combine went higher than they were prepared to measure. A dual citizen of the USA and Canada he trained with the Canadian Olympic team in 2010 and is competing for a roster spot while they attempt to qualify for London 2012. The four year senior netted 29 goals and assisted on 11 others.

Another C+ rated player by Maureci, Sodade and Duran both were in his top 26. An athletic large forward with a background in Ontario, Canada he is quickly similar to O'Brian White.

For Seattle he comes into compete with a shallow forward corp and offers another mix to the tactical plans that Sigi Schmid can make. In what comes as little surprise his twitter account follow numbers are exploding.

With the 15th pick in the MLS SuperDraft Seattle Sounders FC went with Creighton University's Andrew Duran. Duran a versatile defender played at the Combine as a rightback, centerback and right midfield. The senior player was rated as a top 10 defender by Maureci.

Duran is one of three Creighton players at the MLS Combine. The Missouri Valley Conference Defensive Player of the Year in 2011 as a medical red shirt senior. Normally slotted as a left CB in college he led the defense of one of the top defensive teams in the 2011 college season.

At 6'1" and 160 he'll need to fill out a bit. He was the 2006 National High School Player of the Year. The marketing major grew up in the Chicago area. He finished his college career with 1 goal and 2 assists over his five seasons with only 2011 being as a regular starter after the 2010 meniscus injury ended that season early.

Dave's note: Abbott will be joining the Sounder at Heart crew with a nearly weekly column. His FanPosts opened our eyes to the idea of adding someone with a different voice who could provide regular columns about roster construction, lineup management and other stuff. He's our second off-season addition, as you may have noticed Timm joining the ranks to help us cover some news and other stuff. If you haven't guessed we're looking at having an even better site in 2012. Teams that win trophies deserve the best.

Prospecting

The term conjures up images from the birth of Seattle as a city. Seattle became the jump off point for many men seeking their fortunes in the Yukon and in the process the money this generated laid the foundations for a modern day city. When you strip away all the hype and hyperbole; the MLS Player Combine, SuperDraft and Supplemental Draft create the same type of foundation for the future of this league that we all love. At their core, the objective is for teams to sift through all of the potential players available and find the gems that will become the future of their team. This activity carries risk. It is after all, prospecting. But there is also the prospect of reward. Contained within these events are men who will be a key component of the MLS for years to come.

Prospect

These young men are skilled. But even the best of them are simply prospects. They are about to make the leap from soccer as an avocation to soccer as their job. This entails a transition period. None of them will save an MLS franchise this year. Each MLS franchise is in an unique position. For the newer franchises and teams that are rebuilding, the draft may yield a player who becomes a regular contributor to their team by the end of the 2012 season. For the established teams with deep rosters like the LA Galaxy or Seattle Sounders, the draft will yield a piece for the team's future. At best, a player drafted in the first round of the draft by either of these teams might hope to make the 18 for some MLS games this season and become a key contributor off of the bench.

'Prospective'

We are fans, short for 'fanatic'. It's easy to look at these events and lose perspective. Even the best players available in this year's draft are not likely to crack Seattle's Starting 11 unless the team suffers a major player loss due to injury or transfer. If Seattle were to trade up and get the Number 1 pick, the player that they would select is not going to start against Santos Laguna. These young men are prospects. In this lull between the end of the Player Combine and the Super Draft, I realized that it was important for me to grasp this concept and temper my viewpoint accordingly. With this in mind, here are my final thoughts on the 2012 Player Combine.

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The brain trust for Seattle Sounders FC's on field product went to Bradenton, Florida for the MLS Combine. Yesterday, the club provided a conference call with Coach Sigi Schmid and Technical Director Chris Henderson. Like many outside observers they see a deeper draft class than usual, but with top level talent stable in quantity and quality. One thing that Schmid notes is that they can not fall into the trap of over-using the combine as they already scouted these players through their college seasons and some attended the Sounders Vegas Combine;

We’ve scouted during the season, we’ve seen some of these guys in their college environment, some have trained with us, we’ve seen some when they’ve been in with the national team, etc. Sometimes the big mistake people make is, if they have a bad combine they drop off their list and if they have a good combine all of a sudden they jump on the list irrespective of what they’ve done in the previous three-four years in college. From that standpoint, we want to take all that into account.

It's also quite clear that Seattle will go with the best player available. Their unique short list is about 10 or 11 players long and at pick 15 (maybe even 34) they'll take the top remaining man. If all of those players are gone they'll start looking based on position. Schmid then listed the needed positions. It's a long list;

...we’re probably looking a little bit in the middle of midfield because with the loss of [Erik] Friberg we need a little more depth there. Central defense, as well, with the retirement of Taylor Graham. ‘Is Zach Scott going to play inside or outside?’ is something that interests us because Zach can always play inside. ‘How long is it going to take [Steve] Zakuani and O’Brian White to come back?’ So wide midfielders are an interest, as well, and so are center forwards. I think that covers it all, with the exception of maybe goalkeeper, but it’s the reality for us

Chris Henderson & Co. also gained the opportunity to network live and direct with other teams rather than via text or email. While they gave a specific example of the David Horst surgery it is clear that one of the advantages of a league wide combine is that every team has a representative present.

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