Who Is The US MNT Player Of The Year?

This post is only tangentially related to the Galaxy, because of the presence of Landon Donovan in the US Men’s National Team Player Pool. But I thought it would be fun to go through the candidates for player of the year and see what Galaxy fans thought about the choices. (I totally stole this idea from Luis Bueno over at Sideline Views who actually gets to cast a vote that counts in his capacity as a member of the media.)

Here are the rules as promulgated by Futbol de Primera, which stages the Honda Player of the Year event:

The Award
* The Honda Player of the Year Award recognizes the best player on
The U.S. National Team who has played in at least 3 games during the
calendar year. This year, 23 players have met this requirement…
The Rules of Voting
* Each eligible player must have played in a minimum of three (3)
games with the U.S. National Team during 2008.
* A first place vote equals 3 points, a second place vote is worth
2 points and a third place vote counts as 1 point. At the close
of voting, all of the points are tallied and the winner is the player
who receives the most overall points.

Here are the eligible players:

FREDDY ADU
DAMARCUS BEASLEY
CARLOS BOCANEGRA
MICHAEL BRADLEY
DANNY CALIFF
STEVE CHERUNDOLO
BRIAN CHING
RICARDO CLARK
JAY DEMERIT
CLINT DEMPSEY
LANDON DONOVAN
MAURICE EDU
BRAD GUZAN
FRANKIE HEJDUK
TIM HOWARD
EDDIE JOHNSON
SACHA KLJESTAN
EDDIE LEWIS
PABLO MASTROENI
DREW MOOR
OGUCHI ONYEWU
HEATH PEARCE
JOSH WOLFF

Use any criteria you want to make your decision. Personally I tend to give more weight to performances in “games that matter”, like tournament games, than I do to performances in friendlies.

Using that as a guide my top three choices are:

(1) Tim Howard
(2) Michael Bradley
(3) Oguchi Onyewu

I think it is hard to pick any player who has been as consistently good and consistently strong as Tim Howard in 2008. He’s also saved our bacon on numerous occassions, almost single-handedly keeping the US in games. I don’t think he really has any competition for this award this year, but I’ll be the first to tell you I’m no expert.

Reinforcing that self-assessment, I’ve placed Michael Bradley in the second position above. Some of you will no doubt point out some of the really poor performances Bradley gave this year as a reason for not being so highly rated, but I think his poor performances were, on the whole, better than the poor performances of practically everyone else on the list and he had fewer of them. His best performances, on the other hand, add a dimension to the team that has been lacking for years: real creativity from the defensive midfield. He’s got the kind of presence Shalrie Joseph brings to the Revolution, which he showed on Wednesday against (an adminttedly undermanned) Trinidad & Tobago.

Finally, I put Gooch up there because he’s been steady all year with few subpar performances and the ability to play at the level of his opponents. This might be damning with faint praise, but I thought long and hard about putting him second above Bradley before deciding that Bradley’s best games were better than Gooch’s best games.

Those are my top three pick.

Who are your top three picks for Player of the Year for 2008?

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Category: Player News