It’s been nearly a decade since Minnesota United picked Abu Danladi with the first pick in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft. That decision continued to haunt the Loons on Saturday.
Jeremy Ebobisse — whom Portland Timbers took with the fourth pick in that draft — scored the winning goal in Los Angeles FC’s season-opening 1-0 win over MNUFC.
Meanwhile, Danladi played 16 minutes for New Mexico United in the USL Championship in 2024 and he’s not listed on the roster for the second-tier team going into this season.
Former Loons manager Adrian Heath reflected on the Danladi selection during an interview with the Pioneer Press in December. At the time, Ebobisse, who had left Duke early, had briefly trained with MNUFC during its final season in the North American Soccer League in 2016. The Loons were encouraged by what they saw.
“Great kid. Great personality. Working hard,” then-Loons sporting director Manny Lagos said about Ebobisse in October 2016.
Come January, Ebobisse remained a top candidate for the first overall pick, but Danladi moved past Ebobisse in the days leading up to the draft. That was despite concerns about Danladi’s injury history at UCLA, primarily with his hamstrings.
MNUFC made that pick official at No. 1, and Heath said it was initially confirmed as the right decision.
“We could have traded Abu to virtually every team in the MLS when he came out of college,” Heath recalled this winter. “We’ve never had as many phone calls about a player as when Abu was coming out of college.”
But in retrospect, how much did the club waver between Danladi and Ebobisse in the selection process?
“You interview them as well, and you can’t help but like Abu’s smile and infectious personality,” Heath said. “And I got to know him. I went to watch him a few times at UCLA, and got a feel for him. And I liked him as a kid.
“The one question mark was the doubt of his health. Can you keep him fit? And when you’ve got somebody who is so explosive, like he did with his pace, the hamstrings started to become an issue. And that was, for me, a real disappointment because there’s a player there.”
Under the watchful eye of head coach Adrian Heath, Abu Danladi tries to get past Kansas City’s Matt Besler in the second half as Minnesota United FC beat Sporting Kansas FC 2-0 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, May 7, 2017. The Loons drafted Danladi over Jeremy Ebobisse in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)
Since then, Ebobisse has produced 61 goals and 12 assists in 13,776 MLS minutes for Portland, San Jose Earthquakes and now LAFC. Saturday was the first time he has scored against Minnesota, and it was a perfectly placed strike from outside the 18-yard box to the top corner of the net.
Danladi, meanwhile, has managed 16 total goals and six assists in 3,908 MLS minutes for Minnesota and Nashville SC.
To his credit, Danladi had an encouraging start with eight goals and two assists in 1,393 minutes in 2017, but only managed only three combined goals across 488 minutes in 2018 and 718 minutes in 2019.
Danladi was then nabbed by Nashville in the 2020 expansion draft, but the Ghanian scored only three goals in 657 minutes across 2020-21.
Heath remained so enamored with Danlaid that he signed him in 2022, but Danladi still couldn’t stay fit and scored two goals across 634 minutes. He went all the way to Albania to play for a club called Bylis in 2023, but that too was ineffectual and he came back to the U.S.
Ebobisse wasn’t the only player the Loons passed on in that first draft who can come with regret. Miles Robinson went No. 2 to Atlanta; the center back out of Syracuse has played 16,788 minutes for United and FC Cincinnati. He’s also a member of the U.S. men’s national team.
Four more selection players in the top eight have played more than 14,000 MLS minutes since then, including Julian Gressel (eighth to Atlanta), Bloomington’s Jackson Yueill (sixth to San Jose), Lalas Abubakar (fifth to Columbus) and Jake Nerwinski (seventh to Vancouver).
But it’s Ebobisse who has the Loons sitting at 0-1 for the first time since 2021.
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