PHILADELPHIA – In the end, New York City FC got their man.
With the second pick in the 2015 MLS SuperDraft, City drafted striker Khiry Shelton out of Oregon State.
But it really did come down to the last second.
“We actually got offered quite a bit of allocation money to sell that pick, so we had to consider it,” NYCFC head coach Jason Kreis told reporters. “The guy on the board for us was our top guy, but at some point you have to consider allocation money, too, when you’re trying to build a team from scratch.”
Ultimately it wasn’t enough to deter them from selecting Shelton, who, despite being a consensus top 10 pick, said he had no idea that he was going to be taken with the second pick in the draft. To the City staff, that was by design.
“The truth of the matter is that you can’t make those decisions until very late in the day,” Kreis said. “He was our clear No. 1, but that’s not something you can ever let the player know because you don’t know what’s going to happen. As we saw, somebody comes in with a big money offer for us, and we have to consider that, because we have to do right by New York City FC.”
Shelton put up 10 goals and 12 assists during his senior season, earning Pac-12 Player of the Year honors and helping Oregon State to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2003.
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He is not, however, a pure striker. He was the fastest player clocked at the Combine last weekend, and he has the technical ability to make it count. At 6-foot-3 and 175 pounds, he is also big and strong enough to hang with MLS defenders.
“That’s one of the beauties of him, actually, is that he gives us some versatility,” Kreis said. “I don’t think that any of us are married to a system right now. We still have some pieces to add, to be frank, to think about what our system is going to be at the end of the day. We don’t have to make that decision right now, and a player like Khiry gives us some flexibility to play a couple of different ways.”
