MLS Postseason Awards: Dwayne De Rosario Wins MVP In Landslide

Despite being traded twice this year and playing for a team that missed the playoffs, De Rosario garnered a weighted total of nearly 73 percent of the vote. The midfielder won all three voting blocs, with the players voting for him by a nearly 20 percent margin. The media and club voting were significantly closer, with De Rosario winning those blocs by about 5 percent.

Clearly, voters were willing to overlook De Rosario’s shortcomings in order to focus on his impressive statistics. De Rosario won MLS’s Golden Boot after tying for the league lead in goals (16) and finishing fourth in assists (12). Most of that production came with United, where he scored 13 goals and had seven assists in just 18 matches.

Truth be told, the save for which Keller was honored wasn’t so much a save as much as it was a series of saves. It came in his final regular-season home game in front of a crowd of 64,000-plus. With the Sounders trailing 1-0, Keller stopped four shots to preserve the one-goal deficit, giving his team a chance to score a dramatic come-from-behind 2-1 win.

It’s hard to argue with this being the fans’ selection. While any great goal has a degree of skill and luck combined, it seems that Nagbe’s was much more intentional than Hassli’s, the goal that received the second most votes. While Montero’s and Chiumiento’s goals were similarly skillful, neither was quite as awe-inducing as Nagbe’s.

“This is an award I share with my teammates because without them we could not be so successful,” Rosales said in a team release. “It’s been a great season and I am honored by this vote of the media, as well as players and executives of other clubs. I would like thank everyone in the Sounders family-my fellow players, the coaches, staff and, of course, the fans.”

Keller’s final season was also arguably his best. The 41-year-old led all starting goalkeepers by saving 76 percent of the shots he faced and posted a 1.09 goals against average. More importantly, he led the league with 18 wins for a Sounders team that finished with the second most points.

This was Keller’s first Goalkeeper of the Year award during his three-year MLS career.

Some may argue that the deck was always stacked in Bruce Arena’s favor. Apparently, Major League Soccer’s postseason awards voters were willing to look past that, as they named Arena the 2011 Coach of the Year.

This was Arena’s third Coach of the Year award (1997, 2009), putting him one ahead of Schmid on the all-time list.

“I’ve never been out of the game for such a long time,” Beckham said at the time. “It’s been a quick recovery and I’m happy with that. I thought I was ready for 90 minutes four months ago but after 10 minutes on the field, I felt like I was dying.”

Davies’ candidacy was hurt by a particularly bad showing in the club voting bloc. Davies finished in fourth there, with less than 14 percent of the vote.

As voters did a year ago with Olave, Gonzalez seems to have rewarded in no small part to his team’s overall defensive performance. The Galaxy allowed just .82 goals per game, the third lowest mark in league history, and registered a record-tying 17 shutouts, despite using four different goalkeepers.

For the the latest updates on MLS postseason awards, follow this StoryStream. For more analysis and insight into Gonzalez, be sure to check out Galaxy blog LAG Confidential.

“Receiving this honor is very humbling, but it would never have been a possibility without the help of so many people,” Sapong said in a team release. “Our goal at Sporting Kansas City is to do everything as a team, and I am so thankful for my teammates and the coaching staff.”

For all the MLS post-season award winners, be sure to follow this StoryStream.

Davis, DeRosario and Shea all seemed to have struck a different chord with voters, which included media members, players, MLS clubs (coaches, technical directors, president and public relations). Voting was supposed to be based entirely on regular-season MLS performances.

Schedule of announcements and nominees: