Welcome back. After a long, and somewhat eventful off-season that saw multiple hirings and shuffling about of the Metro front office (more on that later) the beginning of the 2010 MLS season has finally arrived. Sure, we are still months away from kick off, but the preseason is officially here.

Hans Backe, New York's shiny new coach from Sweden, began practice on Tuesday, and the consistently exhilarating roster building process known as the MLS Super (thanks for asking) Draft took place on Thursday afternoon. Thanks to everyone's favorite student of the game, Juan Carlos Osorio, Metro was rewarded for its awful season with the number 2 overall pick in the draft, amongst other well placed selections.

Richie Williams, who had a prominent role in this years draft due to Backe's recent arrival and Erik Soler's lack of familiarity with the American college game, stated before the draft that he was interested in drafting the best available player with each pick, as opposed to choosing according to specific needs or positions. With the highly coveted 2nd pick of the draft he did just this, selecting the University of Virginia's Tony Tchani.

Tchani is a central midfielder who had an excellent Combine, usurping Ike Opara as the blogosphere's unquestioned 2nd pick of the draft. Although there are questions about how MLS ready Tchani really is, and his ability to see the game (which is critical for a central midfielder), a significant amount of MLS teams wanted to trade up to sign him, so although it wasn't exceptionally original it was certainly a safe pick.

At 15 we picked up Austin Da Luz, a left mid out of Wake Forest. Da Luz is a technically gifted winger, capable of crossing well and long ranged blasts. He seems talented, despite being one footed. The 18th pick, which I would have used to draft Kwame Watson-Siriboe or Chris Schuler (considered to be two of the drafts better central defenders) was used on Tim Ream of St. Louis U. Ream is a defender who can play left or center back, but his combine reviews weren't spectacular and he wasn't expected to be drafted as early as he was. Metro rounded out the draft with Conor Chin and Irving Garcia at 34 and 50, both forwards.

The 31st and 48th picks were dealt to New England for Chris Albright. Normally I would whine incessantly about this due to Albrights inability to stay healthy (as well as Carlos Johnson being a solid right back for second half of last season) but since Albright is out of contract, we will be able to negotiate a logical salary if Albright performs well in camp.  As the highly educated Erik Soler pointed out, this move was a "low risk, high reward" type scenario and works for me.

We did alright at the draft when examining only our selections, but when considering the overall potential of the draft and moves we could have made, it was slightly disappointing.  Going into the draft, Metro held the top allocation required to sign American National team vets returning from Europe.  These allocations are valuable, and with Dallas confirmed to have both a hard on for American Lee Nguyen (who they'd need to use to allocation on) and the 5th and 6th selections in the draft, we could have  traded for Dave Van den Berg, as well as a spot with which to select Jersey and Red Bull Academy product Dilly Duka.  Instead we slept on that and Dilly Duka was picked 8th by Columbus, which is where promising young players from New Jersey go to stagnate.  Still, at least we still have the allocation, which could come in handy this summer.

Overall it was an alright draft for Metro. We largely took logical, safe choices, and since we had suck good picks this will probably translate into at least a couple players that can contribute.  We certainly could have done better, but considering the fact that our front office was hastily glued together about four minutes before the draft began, things could have been worse as well.

Dave Braneck is a blogger and an all around soccer fan who represents North Jersey to the fullest and contributes to Dailyharrison.com

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