{"id":353930,"date":"2025-12-18T20:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T20:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/353930\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T20:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T20:04:07","slug":"dc-united-select-nikola-markovic-no-1-in-2026-mls-superdraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/353930\/","title":{"rendered":"DC United select Nikola Markovic No. 1 in 2026 MLS SuperDraft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/d-c-united\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">D.C. United<\/a> have selected North Carolina State University center back Nikola Markovic with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLS SuperDraft.<\/p>\n<p>Markovic, who&#8217;s part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/superdraft\/news\/2026-generation-adidas-class-announced\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2026 Generation adidas class<\/a>, joins D.C. after helping NC State reach their first-ever NCAA national championship game in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The sophomore defender started all 22 games last season for the Wolfpack, who outscored opponents 48-9 and posted an NCAA-best 15 shutouts in those matches. For his efforts, Markovic earned 2025 First Team All-American honors.<\/p>\n<p>The Canada native previously played for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/cf-montreal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CF Montr\u00e9al<\/a>&#8216;s academy before attending NC State.<\/p>\n<p>Markovic joins a D.C. side that&#8217;s in rebuild mode after finishing bottom of the table during the 2025 season, while conceding the joint second-most goals (66).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He is the Black-and-Red&#8217;s fourth all-time No. 1 pick in the MLS SuperDraft, following Jason Moore (1999), Alecko Eskandarian (2003) and Freddy Adu (2004).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"D.C. United have selected North Carolina State University center back Nikola Markovic with the No. 1 overall pick&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,16529,24855,82,153365,34331],"class_list":["post-353930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-d-c-united","tag-sendtonews","tag-sports","tag-superdraft","tag-transfer-tracker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}