Eric Miller

In February 2016, Colorado shipped a first-round pick and undisclosed allocation money to Montreal for the young defender. Miller had arrived in the league two years earlier as the fifth overall pick in the 2014 SuperDraft, straight out of Creighton University. Along the way, his performances earned him a look at senior international level — in January 2016, Jürgen Klinsmann called him into a US national team training camp, though he never turned that into a cap.

Minnesota United picked him up in 2018, and Nashville claimed him in the November 2019 Re-Entry Draft, where he stayed through the 2022 season. By 2023, Miller found himself without a club and signed as a free agent with Portland, the organisation whose academy pipeline he had once passed through in USL colours. The move closed a loop that had started a decade earlier. On the pitch, his defensive work had rarely translated into goals, which made 7 April 2024 a rare marker: his first goal in MLS, arriving a full ten years into his professional career.