2011 MLS Awards: Dwayne De Rosario Nominated For MVP, Perry Kitchen & Charlie Davies Also Nominated
by Martin Shatzer on Nov 7, 2011 8:33 PM EST
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MLS revealed the finalists for each of the 2011 Awards today, and DC United players are all over the ballot. For a team that didn't even make the playoffs, we sure do have some great individual contributors.
Three United players are among the final three nominations for this season's awards. That's tied for the most nominees with the Los Angeles Galaxy and Seattle Sounders. Pretty good company. Maybe next year the league will change the rules so that the 10 teams with the most individual nominees will make the playoffs.
It's got to be a good sign for this team's future that we have a player among the rookie of the year finalists for the third year in a row. Reprising Andy Najar's ROTY performance in 2010, Perry Kitchen is a deserving candidate for the award this year. The promising young defender faces some steep competition from CJ Sapong and Michael Farfan.
While David Beckham had to come back from decreasing coverage in tabloid magazines and Dominic Oduro had to come back from sucking throughout the entire rest of his career, United forward Charlie Davies had to come back from life threatening injuries. He could be the favorite to win the Comeback Player Of The Year category.
The MVP Award is wide open though. Golden Boot winner Dwayne De Rosario certainly deserves plenty of consideration with his 16 goals and 12 assists on the year, but discriminating voters may have left him off their ballots due to United failing to reach the playoffs. Brad Davis, on the other hand, has helped take his team to the MLS Cup Final, and he's done it without any star power while leading the league in assists. Brek Shea also had a great season, but faded down the stretch and is probably a fairly distant third behind the other two candidates at this point.
The winners will be revealed in the lead-up to MLS Cup, with the top rookie being announced tomorrow, the comeback player award being announced next Monday, and the MVP being announced next Friday.
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I don't see how Davies doesn't win Comeback Player of the Year
Obviously I want De Ro to win MVP, and he’s deserving, but I won’t be at all upset if Brad Davis wins. I’ve said for awhile that if someone besides De Ro wins, I hope it’s Davis.
And Kitchen probably won’t win, but he definitely deserved to be nominated. It definitely seems like we did alright by not getting Darlington Nagbe or Omar Salgado.
If DC made it to the playoffs
I think it’d be DeRo no question. But I think MLS types have too much of a love affair with Shea and he will edge Davis.
Same goes for Kitchen. If DC was in, he’d win it. I think Sapong is the strongest case otherwise, but I’m wondering if his ROTY win will make them choose otherwise. Anybody know if a player has done the double in awards?
Davies should get comeback player no question. What did Beckham come back from? London social duties? Oduro had a great season, but Davies’ story takes it.
Sapong winning ROTY is fair
Kitchen will be the better player, but over the course of this season alone, I’d say Sapong was slightly better. It was an easier job (playing FW with Bravo, Bunbury, and Kamara vs. playing RB/CB/DM with constantly injured rotation and no good left back option), but context is not really a part of these things anyway.
Davies for Comeback shouldn’t even be close, but then the award is kind of silly to begin with. There’s always one nominee (sometimes more) who hasn’t had to come back from anything. Oduro, for example, just finally stepped up to the next level as a player. There’s no previous high level of play for him to be returning to.
De Ro should be MVP, but this old-school “no playoffs, no MVP” thinking is a big problem in gathering the votes. I’d much prefer a Player of the Year award instead, because that doesn’t fall into the yearly MVP debate of being a literalist or just giving it to the best player.
Writer on SB Nation's DC United blog Black and Red United | @ChestRockwell14 | KEEP UNITED IN DC
Agree with all of this
Even I voted for Sapong for ROTY – think if he’d played enough games with the DCU Academy to warrant homegrown status.
I choose to think of MVP as a stand-in for the Golden Ball, which is more of a Most Outstanding Player award. And because there are no actual guidelines for MVP voting, I’m allowed to do that – now if they’d just change the name of the award to reflect my chosen reality…
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Last year, I was campaigning all over twitter and the SBN-MLS mailing list for Najar to win ROTY. This year I don’t really feel strongly enough about any of our three candidates to do the same.
Managing Editor for BlackAndRedUnited.com. Weekly Columnist for SB Nation D.C..
by Martin Shatzer on Nov 10, 2011 4:15 PM EST up reply actions
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