Landon Donovan was named the 2009 MLS MVP. (LA Galaxy)

The 2009 Major League Soccer MVP was announced today and the result isn’t going to shock most of you as LA Galaxy star Landon Donovan takes home the award.

For the first time in his career, Donovan took home the league’s highest honors by beating out New England’s Shalrie Joseph and Dallas’ Jeff Cunningham. Donovan was also named to the league’s Best XI this year and scored the Goal of the Year.

Donovan led his club with 12 goals and six assists in 25 games, despite missing a month of the season while at the FIFA Confederations Cup with the US National Team. He also helped get the Galaxy back to the playoffs for the first time since 2005.

Some won’t like Donovan winning this award but I can’t say I am totally one of them here as I did vote for him. Joseph did deserve the award I will admit that as he did get my second place vote. But it was just something with the way Donovan carried himself this season, this entire season that caught my eye in the voting. It wasn’t easy folks and I can bet it wasn’t easy for other voters too.

The regular season is done, over, finished or whatever other adjective you want to use. For the second straight season WVH got to participate in the league’s media vote for the season awards. Voting is now over and I felt it was time to share my votes with you all.

I’ll have to admit some awards were tougher to vote on than others but I tried to span the entire season’s body of work as much as I could for these awards. The way you vote for these awards is to give your first, second and third place votes for each. Now I will leave out the lesser awards like best PR from a club and best ref of the year. The rest I will list below.

Robert Warzycha was the best coach fo the year for me. (Getty Images)

Coach of the Year:

1. Robert Warzycha (Columbus): Some will definitely disagree with me on this one and I will be honest I really went back and forth on this award but at the end of the day I had to give it up to a guy that kept things just the way they were and got this club to a second straight Supporter’s Shield trophy. Consistency is key in this league and its even more amazing to see it happen after a coaching change.

2. Sigi Schmid (Seattle): I think anytime you take an expansion team to the playoffs you deserve some big time credit for it.

3. Bruce Arena (LA): I kind of have a feeling he will end up with this award but he didn’t get my top vote but not because he didn’t deserve it. The job he did in LA was definitely one of his best. I am just waiting to see if it turns into a MLS Cup before I call it his best work.

Defender of the Year:

1. Geoff Cameron (Houston): One of the easier award for me to vote on. Cameron was consistent and easily the best defender of the year in my eyes.

2. Chad Marshall (Columbus): Had he stayed healthy through the entire season he would have won back-to-back votes from me for this. It was close but his injuries hurt him I thought for this award.

3. Jhon Kennedy Hurtado (Seattle): The biggest X-factor on that Seattle defense is Hurtado. The guy is that good folks. Continue Reading…

With today being the league’s All-Star game it just felt right to go into some award talk. Most of the awards feel like they are going to be decided very late in the year this season. A lot of names in the running for things like the MVP race and the rookie of the year race. Only the comeback award feels like it is all but given out to Chivas keeper Zach Thornton.

For each award I’ll give a quick rundown of guys in the running for the award. Each list is in no real order at this time since it would be almost silly to rank each player (or coach) at this point with so much left to do this season.

Feel free as always to give your thoughts on the awards and who you think should be at the top of each list.

MVP

Players in the running:

• Guillermo Barros Schelotto (Columbus
• Landon Donovan (LA)
• Fredy Montero (Seattle)
• Brad Davis (Houston)
• Shalrie Joesph (New England)

This will be a very tight race if some parties stay hurt (GBS) or are gone for national team games (Donovan). I put Joesph on the list because I’ve always been a fan of how underrated he is in this league. Without him New England would be close to what Dallas and San Jose are right now in the standings. Montero gets on the list because of the excitement he has brought to Seattle this year, and his numbers are really good. Davis is another underrated guy that more people need to look at. Houston wouldn’t nearly be as well run in the midfield if it weren’t for him. Continue Reading…

MLS released their award finalist today. I was planning on sharing my votes later on this week or early next week but why not today. I was able to vote in this year’s voting through the league (apparently the league enjoys the blogging world out there that cover the sport). My selections are marked in bold. I will release my Best XI later on.

Goalkeeper (Nov. 4 announcement)
Jon Busch, Chicago Fire
Will Hesmer, Columbus Crew
Matt Reis, New England Revolution

Fair Play (Nov. 4)
Juan Pablo Angel, New York Red Bulls
Michael Parkhurst, New England Revolution
Chris Rolfe, Chicago Fire

Comeback (Nov. 22)
Jon Busch, Chicago Fire
Kenny Cooper, FC Dallas
Santino Quaranta, D.C. United

Defender (Nov. 6)
Jimmy Conrad, Kansas City Wizards
Chad Marshall, Columbus Crew
Bakary Soumare, Chicago Fire
(I actually voted for Gonzalo Segares, Chicago Fire)

Rookie (Nov. 13)
Geoff Cameron, Houston Dynamo
Kheli Dube, New England Revolution
Sean Franklin, Los Angeles Galaxy

Coach (Nov. 11)
Dominic Kinnear, Houston Dynamo
Sigi Schmid, Columbus Crew
Frank Yallop, San Jose Earthquakes

Most Valuable Player (Nov. 20)
Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Chicago Fire
Landon Donovan, Los Angeles Galaxy
Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Columbus Crew

Newcomer (Nov. 11)
Darren Huckerby, San Jose Earthquakes
Claudio Lopez, Kansas City Wizards
Andre Rocha, FC Dallas

I figured today would be a good day as ever to do a new poll here at WVH. Its sort of slow news wise so I am cleaning up some things around here and felt it was a good time to start discussing the MVP race for this season.

You have five players to pick from on the right and one “other” option. If you pick the “other” option use this post to submit your player that you think should be this year’s MVP.

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. Continue Reading…