2018 MLS Draft: New York Red Bulls select Jose Aguinaga with 85th overall pick

With their fifth and final selection of the 2018 MLS SuperDraft - the 16th of the fourth round and 85th overall - the New York Red Bulls picked Jose Aguinaga.

Rider University seems to have been mining a seam of European playmakers recently, and RBNY appears to have positioned itself as the primary beneficiary of the college’s scouting work. Florian Valot’s work for RBNY II won him a first-team contract for 2018. Now it looks as though the Rider alum’s spot on the II team will be occupied by one of his former teammates: Aguinaga.

Aguinaga leaves Rider as the men’s soccer program’s all-time assists leader (32 in 76 career appearances), and he also tallied 18 goals at the college level. RBNY got to know him last summer, when he played for the club’s U-23 team in PDL: he finished the season as the U-23’s leading assist-man (four in 14 appearances) and third-highest goal scorer (seven for the season).

In common with the rest of this year’s RBNY draft picks, Aguinaga is assumed to be destined for the Red Bulls’ reserve team. If he can follow the path charted by his fellow Rider alum, Valot, we can perhaps expect to see Aguinaga on the first-team roster in 2020.