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The 2009 Major League Soccer season and Playoffs runs from March 21 to November. The 15 teams in the league are divided into the Eastern and Western Conferences - seven in the Eastern Conference, eight in the Western Conference. Each team plays 30 games, evenly divided between home and away matches. Each team competes against every other team twice, home and away, for a total of 28 games. The remaining two games are intra-conference matches, often highlighting geographic and conference rivalries.
MLS has four berths in the CONCACAF Champions League. For CONCACAF Champions League 2009-10, qualifying teams include MLS Cup 2008 and Supporters' Shield winner the Columbus Crew, Supporters' Shield runner-up the Houston Dynamo, MLS Cup runner-up the New York Red Bulls, and 2008 U.S. Open Cup winner D.C. United. Columbus and Houston are automatically seeded into the Group Stage, while New York and D.C. are required to play in the Preliminary Round.
The MLS SuperDraft is an annual event in which the Major League Soccer teams select players who have graduated from college or otherwise been signed by the league. The SuperDraft was first instituted in 2000, as a combination of the MLS College Draft, in which players having graduated from college were selected, and the MLS Supplemental Draft, in which all other players were chosen. The draft is divided into four rounds of fourteen picks, the order of which is determined by a combination of the teams' playoffs and regular season positions, with the last placed team getting the first pick.
2008 NO. 1 PICK: Chance Myers
Myers played collegiate soccer at UCLA from 2006 to 2007. Over two years he started in 26 of his 42 appearances and managed 4 goals and 4 assists. During his college years he also played in the USL Premier Development League with Ventura County Fusion. Leaving school early, he was drafted in the first overall in the 2008 MLS SuperDraft and signed for $130,000.
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