Most of the MLS MVP chatter has centered around three players: Landon Donovan, Fredy Montero and David Ferreira. You might hear Javier Morales' name thrown into the mix or even Edson Buddle's.
Major League Soccer MVP Race: Union’s Le Toux, Quakes’ Wondolowski Bolster Darkhorse Credentials
A reasonable case can be made for any of these players. All play on successful teams and have put up solid to spectacular numbers. Basically, all of them fit a pretty standard American definition of a league MVP.
Quietly, at least two more players are demanding recognition. San Jose's Chris Wondolowski and Philadelphia's Sebastian LeToux continue to put up numbers that are going to be pretty hard to ignore when voters are actually forced to jot down names. At the very least, they are making it very hard for voters to justify their reasons for not including them.
As Scott K. over at Brotherly Game points out, Le Toux has directly contributed to 23 of the Union’s 32 goals this season. That’s a remarkable rate of 72 percent, easily the highest of any player.
Sebastien Le Toux is the truest emulation of that gentlemanly nature of soccer - he is a gentleman on and off the pitch. Le Toux this season has established himself as an elite player in the MLS with 13 goals and 10 assists, accounting for nearly 72 percent of the Union's offensive production (13 goals + 10 assists = 23 goal contributions out of the 32 goals that the Union have scored this season). But it is his huge heart and his graciousness towards the fans are what truly make him great.
The obvious knock against Le Toux’s MVP candidacy is that he’s playing for a team that has never really been in the playoff hunt. You can certainly argue that Le Toux means more to his team than any other player, but at the end of the day that team is still out of the playoffs -- much farther out to be sure, but still out.
Still, those numbers are pretty hard to brush off. I’m not sure that his numbers are so much better than the other candidates to overlook that potentially fatal flaw, but I have to admit that making the anti-Le Toux argument makes me feel a little like the old-school baseball writers who only want to look at Win-Loss record when choosing the Cy Young.
While Wondolowski’s statistics lack the overall heft of Le Toux’s, he does have something that the Frenchman lacks: a spot in the playoffs. It can also be argued that Wondo is an even bigger part of his team’s success, as his 14 goals account for roughly 47 percent of the Quakes’ total. Unsurprisingly, then, he leads MLS with eight game-winning scores. Three more of his goals have either tied the match or put the Quakes ahead and San Jose has lost just one of the matches in which he’s scored.
Take Wondolowski’s goals out of the equation and the Quakes would have 16 fewer points than they do now, or roughly on the pace of the past two seasons when they missed the playoffs.
Yes, both players have holes in their candidacy: Le Toux’s team isn’t very good and Wondolowski’s contributions are pretty limited to goal scoring. But it’s hard to argue against either player fitting the literal definition of Most Valuable Player.
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