Andrew Wenger edges out Dom Dwyer for MLS player of the week

Every week, MLS announces their player of the week, as voted on by the North American Soccer Reporters. Who are they? Who knows! They’re a lot of your favorite soccer media personalities and journalists, but some of the most knowledgable minds in the game are excluded for very petty reasons, while many of the voters don’t really cover or watch soccer. They don’t tell you who votes, or who their votes were cast for. It’s all a mystery.

That’s why we’ve decided to do our own player of the week here at SB Nation. The difference between us and the league’s award is that it’s completely transparent. Everyone who submits a ballot votes for first, second and third place. First-place votes get three points, second two points and third one point. Sometimes we’ll get the same player as the league and sometimes it’ll be different, but you’ll know exactly how we arrived at our decision.

And that is ...

This week, we match the league, though it was close. Dom Dwyer got quite a few votes for his two-goal performance, but our voters were more impressed with Wenger’s role in Houston Dynamo’s 5-0 destruction of FC Dallas.

A call-out to my fellow voters: why don’t you consider a non-attacking player? I was guilty of voting for three goal-scorers in Week 1, but gave a vote for Anibal Godoy this week. Shouts to my colleagues Alicia Rodriguez and John Rosch, who also cast votes for non-attackers. And to Thad Bell and Robert Jonas, who voted for non-attackers last week.

Below, the results.

Andrew Wenger: 34 points
Dom Dwyer: 27 points
Ignacio Piatti: 13 points
Others receiving votes: Sebastian Giovinco, Chris Pontius, Marco Pappa, Andre Blake, Laurent Ciman, David Villa, Anibal Godoy, Sunny Obayan, Quincy Amarikwa.

Admittedly, we made the decision to do this after Week 1 of the MLS season kicked off, so we didn’t have time to whip up a player of the week post. However, you deserve to see the results. The league’s player of the week was Mike Magee.

Ignacio Piatti: 49 points
Mike Magee: 38 points
Others receiving votes: Fabian Castillo, Sebastian Giovinco, Diego Fagundez, David Bingham, Diego Chara, Mauro Diaz, Maxi Urruti, Tommy McNamara, David Accam, Cyle Larin, Nuno Coelho, Kyle Beckerman, Diego Valeri.