My MLS Top 25

MLS ended their season-long celebration of the league’s silver anniversary by selecting The 25 Greatest, 25 players “who achieved the most on the field, advanced the league off the field and helped lay the foundation and set the course for MLS’s next 25 years.” That description is quite a mouthful and allows a wide range of interpretation by the panel who selected this group.

For me, the basis for placing any player on a “greatest” list will be on-field achievement. For some players, like strikers, measuring on-field achievement is relatively easy. Strikers are paid to score goals, so one can simply look up a player’s goal totals. For others, like fullbacks and holding midfielders, they may have to be evaluated by the eye test, which requires some experience and soccer acumen from the evaluator.

In most cases, I think that the MLS selection panel got their choices right. There are some players who should not have made this list and there are others whose merits can be reasonably argued. My list, but for one notable exception, was rooted in on-field performance, and is presented below in alphabetical order.

Chris Armas, midfielder
David Beckham, midfielder
Cuathemoc Blanco, midfielder
Carlos Bocanegra, defender
Clint Dempsey, midfielder
Landon Donovan, midfielder
Marco Etcheverry, midfielder
Stefan Frei, goalkeeper
Sebastian Giovinco, striker
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, striker
Robbie Keane, striker
Chad Marshall, defender
Josef, Martinez, striker
Tony Meola, goalkeeper
Jaime Moreno, forward
Piotr Nowak, midfielder
Michael Parkhurst, defender
Eddie Pope, defender
Preki, midfielder
Steve Ralston, midfielder
Nick Rimando, goalkeeper
Guillermo Barros Schelotto, midfielder
Carlos Valderrama, midfielder
Diego Valeri, midfielder
Carlos Vela, forward

Players who made The 25 Greatest list, but were left off of my lst:

Jeff Agoos, defender
Kyle Beckerman, midfielder
Robin Fraser, defender
Kevin Hartman, goalkeeper
Cobi Jones, midfielder
Dwayne De Rosario, midfielder
Bradley Wright-Phillips, striker
Chris Wondolowski, striker

Players who made my list, but were left off of The 25 Greatest lst:

Chris Armas, midfielder
Cuathemoc Blanco, midfielder
Stefan Frei, goalkeeper
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, striker
Piotr Nowak, midfielder
Michael Parkhurst, defender
Guillermo Barros Schelotto, midfielder
Carlos Vela, forward

The rationale for my selections and omissions came down to who was the better player. Three goalkeepers appeared on both lists; MLS picked Hartman and I picked Frei. Simply, Frei is the superior keeper. On a per-game basis, their stats are very similar with respect to shutouts and Goals-Against Average But if I were picking sides for a kick-about in the park and they were the goalies available, my guy would be Frei..

MLS selected one more defender than I did, tabbing Agoos and Fraser, while I opted for Parkhurst. I have no significant criticisms of Agoos nor of Fraser, but they were players who parlayed ordinary talent into long careers in MLS. I rate Parkhurst a cut above either of them, as he was a steadying influence wherever he played. He defended using his skills and soccer smarts, rather than trying to win a ball using physical play. The following table tells the whole story:

Other defenders I considered and who are superior to Agoos and Fraser were: Marcelo Balboa, Matt Besler, Nat Borchers, and Jamison Olave.

Among midfielders, I took a pass on Beckerman, Jones and De Rosario, and preferred Armas, Blanco, Nowak, and Schelotto. Beckerman has no business being among this group of elite players. His selection smacks of a participation trophy for having played in 498 matches (and racking up 123 cautions for tackles that took the meat off of opponents’ ankles). Armas was by far the superior player. And just comparing defensive midfielders, Osvaldo Alonso, Diego Chara, and Pablo Mastroeni come to mind ahead of Beckerman.

I lump Jones into the same category as Agoos and Fraser, an ordinary player who managed a long career. He compares poorly with the attacking midfielders on my list. De Rosario is the omission from my list that is the most difficult to defend. His individual accolades are numerous, but I perceived him as one of the most MLS overrated players of his era.

Blanco, Nowak, and Schelotto have very few peers among MLS midfielders. Blanco and Schelotto were one-man wrecking crews who always lifted their teammates onto their shoulders in order to find a way to win. And if anyone was a better box-to-box midfielder than Nowak in the history of MLS, I must have missed his career. Nowak’s two-way skills were impeccable and would easily provide a blueprint for how to play the position. All three are miles better than De Rosario.

MLS chose Wright-Phillips and Wondolowski while I put Ibrahimovic and Vela on my list. The numbers for Wright-Phillips and Wondolowski are excellent, but their goal totals are largely based on having played a lot of games. On the other hand, I will concede that scoring goals is the hardest thing to do on a soccer field, so netting one goal roughly every other game (as Wright-Phillips and Wondolowski have done) is an accomplishment that should not be easily dismissed. While I may be damning these players with faint praise, others have done more in fewer games.

Vela has accumulated just 52 goals and 29 assists, but has only played 66 times in his three-year career. Vela is the better striker because of his ability to create scoring situations on his own, either for himself or for a teammate. Ibrahimovic was a deadly scorer with an assassin’s conscience. Ibrahimovic may have been left off of the MLS list because he only played two seasons in the league, but no other goalscorer has brought such devastating and dominant impact. (Although it is impossible to measure the influence of league politics on these choices, one has to wonder whether many of Ibrahimovic’s critical comments of MLS factored into his omission.)

Below is a compilation of striker statistics, alongside those of Wright-Phillips and Wondolowski:

The per-game totals piled up by Razov and Twellman are no less impressive than those of Wright-Phillips and Wondolowski. Giving the honor to the latter two based on longevity makes little sense.

Finally, the one selection that required the longest time to justify was that of David Beckham. While his stats don’t jump off the page, his impact on games was easy to spot. Beckham was a player who made those around him better. His inclusion on this list is required, however, because of the massive, almost incalculable effect that his career had on MLS and its trajectory after his arrival. He was the first MLS player on whom a club could break the bank and his six-year career opened the eyes of many foreign stars who might have otherwise shunned playing in a league many Europeans consider to be a soccer backwater. His arrival in MLS is comparable to when Pele was coaxed out of retirement to play for the New York Cosmos in 1975. After Pele, the NASL saw a parade of stars come to America: Johann Cruyff, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, and many, many others. One can speculate whether players like Ibrahimovic, Vela, Thierry Henry and David Villa (to name a few) would have considered MLS as a destination if not for the path paved by Beckkam.

Image courtesy of mlssoccer.com