WVHooligan - Soccer Blog

Hard to believe that it already that time. Time to start putting together watch lists for certain yearly awards. Right now you could make a case for a lot of people in this year’s MVP race.

But let’s look at the award real quick. I’m kind of hoping this is the year that someone other than a 18 goal scorer wins this award. Most Valuable Player. Think about the meaning for a second. It should go to the best player right? Absolutely. But it should also go to a guy that is valuable to his club. Meaning you take him out of the line up for a week due to an international call up or a something like that and the club looks completely different without him.

Sure most big time goal scorers deserve this award when this time comes around. But this year I think we are seeing a different trend of players that are of a higher value than those big scorers.

It may still be early to some but this is my shortlist right now for the MVP race and yes it is in an actual order (no messing around here).

1. Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Columbus Crew – I talked about GBS earlier in the weekly award talk. Hopefully you’ve had some time to review his stats and what he does for this club. Five goals and 14 assists (six more than the next three in that category). For me you take this guy out of the Crew’s line up and this club may not even be a playoff team. That’s how valuable GBS is to the Columbus Crew. He may not knock in as many as some would like for a MVP but he damn well creates enough for his club.

But the big knock on him to some may be on the issue (if you can call it an issue) of giving him this award even though he wasn’t an All-Star this year. Its a crap issues and probably something that will come up in some voters minds. Not mine though, not mine.

2. Shalrie Joseph, New England Revolution – Another guy that if you take him out of the line up his club looks a bit different. Sure the Revs are a little deeper than the Crew are but Joseph is a total beast. I said after the All-Star game that he looks like he owns this league with the way he plays in the midfield. Look at the SuperLiga (I know it’s not going to help his cause but it could to some), Joseph pretty much owned that tournament this year for the Revs. Four goals in that short tournament, helping them claim the North American crown.

His biggest knock, do you really give out an MVP award to a defensive midfielder? Hard to imagine voters going that way even though Joseph deserves it more than most out there.

3. Kenny Cooper, FC Dallas: Now some will say, “yes, a goal scorer, finally.” Yes SuperCooper is having a monster year (13 goals, 3 assists) and to take him away from FC Dallas would have been killer to that club.

I think his only knock may have been the fact that he has yet to full overcome Landon Donovan for the Golden Boot race.

4. Jamie Moreno, DC United: If you went on stats alone you’d probably have to include Moreno. Nine goals and eight assists on the year. Very Ben Olsen like from a year ago. He may not get the love for this award but clearly his play has spoken for itself in a year were DC is posed to end up with a wild record of something like 15-14-1.

5. Landon Donovan, LA Galaxy: I had trouble even including Land-o on this list but I also had trouble ignoring those stats. A league leading 14 goals and then seven assists to go along with it. That is reason alone to include him here. Thing is he hasn’t been nearly as deadly as we saw early in the year. I don’t know if it is due to all of his international callups or if it is due to defenses figuring out how to defend LA (which I think is the case). Still Land-o has had a monster year and still looks to be on pace to get 20 goals before its all out.

Others in the running: Juan Pablo Angel, NY; Luciano Emilio, DC; Sasha Kljestan, Chivas USA; and Steve Ralston, New England.

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