How Andre Blake almost ended up in Vancouver, not Philadelphia
The Union's star goalkeeper expected to be drafted by the Whitecaps, but after a splashy draft-day trade, the Union called his name instead.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/5JEQTQCBYJC77DVU6OMNYQMOSM.jpg)
Most Union fans know of Andre Blake’s accomplishments as the team’s star goalkeeper. But they might not know how Blake came to never playing here in the first place.
As he details in the latest edition of The Inquirer’s Icons series, when Blake was heading into the 2014 Major League Soccer draft, he expected to be going to the Vancouver Whitecaps — a long way from his home in Jamaica, his college at UConn, and anywhere else he’d ever lived.
» READ MORE: The Union celebrate breaking Major League Soccer’s decade-old record for the stingiest defense
“I was probably 95% sure that I was going to Vancouver,” Blake recalled. “The goalkeeper coach [Maris Rövde] [Marius Røvde] really liked me, the head coach Carl Robinson. … I spoke with them the entire [scouting] combine.”
The amount of interest the Union had shown Blake up to then, he said, was “little to none. … I felt like they talked to me just to talk to me.”
Longtime Union fans might recall the order of that draft: D.C. United at No. 1, the Union at No. 2, and Vancouver at No. 3. D.C. already had a stalwart goalkeeper in Bill Hamid. So the Union might not have needed to move up to No. 1 to get Blake.
But on the day of the draft, which took place in Philadelphia, then-Union CEO Nick Sakewicz made a splashy trade with D.C. to move the Union up. MLS commissioner Don Garber called Blake’s name, and the rest is history.
“When they said that the Union were trading up, at that point, I was like, ‘Wait …’” he said. “But I still didn’t know it was going to be me until they said ‘A member of Generation Adidas’ [a group of elite college prospects]. And I was like, ‘Wow.’ "
Read more about how it all happened in our feature on why Blake is the most important player in Union history.