Who was U.S. MVP in the World Cup

I might vote for Mathis as well, though it's very unfair to him. Before the World Cup, I would have expected he would have started every game, thus making monumental contributions to the team. Sadly, he only played 45.3% of the time. Since he was World Class in those 204 minutes, he still made the greatest net contribution to the team, but he could have done twice as much.

In summary, I would have voted Mathis for best player and biggest disappointment.

 

Nice try.

Chuck Howley, the MVP of Super Bowl V, was the starting Outside Linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys and was on the field for the majority plays the defense was on the field.

He wasn't an offensive player so those minutes weren't available to him.

 

I see you are unaware of the rules of American football.

 

I see you are unaware of the fact that by the early '70s the era of the two way player in the NFL was long gone.

Please try again to find another player in ANY competition who played a similar amount of time as Mathis to support your theory that he was a legitimate USMNT MVP candidate at the World Cup.

Like I said, stats without any facts to back them up are meaningless.

 

I think that Josh was better also, but I dunno about MVP honors.....

 

I already did, Chuck Howley. You rejected that case.

The fact is that most sports do not have the level of draws. Moreover, and I am terribly sorry for not pointing this out to you in the prior post, I have never heard of a sport that awards an MVP to 8th place teams. It goes without saying that Mathis was not the MVP of the World Cup. Not by a long shot.

 

I think you'll find that we won't have many disagreements about Mathis, except as regards to this peculiar case.

It was not my intention to completely hijack this thread. I'll try to let people have their fun and discuss McBride, Donovan, etc.

I would prefer talking about the future at this point.

 

One more thing. Since you are becoming increasingly agitated, I suggest we drop this discussion. You are clearly not enjoying it and I would much prefer being insulted by the likes of Monster and Superdave.

I have posted extensively on this matter and noted Wolff's contributions as well and don't wish to rehash everything. Had I known Bigsoccer would lose all its data, perhaps I would have saved all my posts, assuming they could fit on my 80 GB hard drive. Then I would copy and paste everything. I have a certain way of viewing sports and have used the same standards before the World Cup and even before I had heard of Clint Mathis. It is outrageous to claim that I am using trickery and deceit. If I were so inclined, I would come up with some explanation for how Mathis deserves the MVP in MLS. I haven't even been pointing out some of the stuff that Jeff Bradley has been discussing about Mathis.

Perhaps it would be more useful to discuss numbers more people are familiar with. As a general rule, you could judge a pitcher by his ERA. That doesn't mean that you give the Cy Young to one of the numerous players that inevitably finish with a 0.00 ERA in a small number of innings. Mathis is comparable to a guy with 110 innings and an ERA of, say, 2.30. A pitcher with 200 innings could have a somewhat higher ERA and still be worthy of a Cy Young, but if that pitcher had, say a 4.20 ERA I would give it to Mathis. If he had a 2.95 ERA, then it's a tougher case. It just wasn't close here.

It is undeniable that Wolff played better than Mathis in his minutes, but it is also undeniable that Mathis was more productive. Wolff would have need above average player contributions in the remaining time to beat Mathis.

 

Re: Re: Who was U.S. MVP in the World Cup

Please pay attention.

We aren't talking about MVP for the entire World Cup just the USMNT MVP.

Again the question:

Has any team in any competition had an MVP who played less than half the minutes available to him and whose team didn't win a game he played in?

Unless you show a precedent you don't have a leg to stand on unless you want to say Mathis's performance was unprecedented in the history of sports and deserves special consideration.

Team MVPs usually have a significant effect on their team's performance.

Mathis played well when he was in there but there are others who affected the USMNT's performance more than he did, like the 5 listed in the SoccerAmerica poll.

 

Re: Re: Re: Who was U.S. MVP in the World Cup

Please give me a list of 8th place team MVPs in tournaments and I will look over the names. To be named an MVP of a tournament requires greater productivity that Mathis provided. Since I have no examples of an 8th placed team awarding MVPs for a small tournament, the only thing unprecedented is this discussion.

I might also point out that I attach little credibility to MVP awards in the first place given that the same faulty judgment being applied by the majority here is frequnetly used. Can you believe Joe D got the MVP in 1941 over Ted Williams???? That's 100 times worse than not giving Mathis the MVP here. Steve Stone won the Cy Young. One trillion times as bad as not giving Mathis the MVP. So even if 8th place teams in short tournaments were given MVP awards and there was no similar case to Mathis that you accepted after a series of qualifications, it makes little difference. But since there are no cases, your question is meaningless.

There are no cases of 8th place team MVPs that I am aware of. Unless you are asking me to come up with my own personal MVP, in which case I will use the exact analysis that you reject. It is also totally bogus to compare this with other sports and conveniently treat the crucial draw as a de facto loss.

 

All of the choices listed are worthy. McBride is also worthy because he contributed a great deal with his workrate in addition to being involved in vital goals.

It's easy to forget that he started the first goal against Mexico by receiving the ball under pressure and playing Reyna down the sideline.

Mathis may be our best player when he has the ball, time, and space in the final third, but a lot of work has to be done to first create that situation. Donovan and JOB, to name two, contributed more total value (even per unit time).

 

And Mathis would have needed to produce in his remaining time to have a case as being more valueable than JOB. Remembering that JOB performed many tactical fouls to stop the flow of counters, set up and scored important goals, and was our most influential midfielder over the course of the tournament. Of course you like to ignore all of that because Mathis wasn't in good enough form to merit as much playing time.

Mathis had less effect than McBride. Sorry, but two goals is more important than a goal and an assist. Mathis had less effect than Donovan as well. Of course this arguement is going straight at your "value" of placing assists and goals on the same level. The thing is that most goals have an assist, but 95% of potential assists do not end up in goals.

Think about Reyna setting up Donovan against Korea, that was a sitter and was definitely a "result" or "production" by Reyna. Yet he got torched after the game while Donovan took little flack. Donovan's foul set up Korea's goal, Donovan's miss allowed Korea to take home a point...JOB, Friedal, and Mathis were the outstanding players in that game, but if not for Donovan we would be mentioning Reyna too.

So in short:

*Reject your weighting (so Mathis wasn't our most productive player)
*Still think you are applying different standards to Wolff and Mathis and if your production for time played shows someone's value then Wolff is more MVP than Mathis.
*Reject your lack of looking at the impact of the midfielders who by nature do the most work on the field.
*Reject your pompous attitude, your discussion by authority lecture(that's not a discussion), your idea that I am getting agitated, your idea that I don't understand your points (I do, I just find them severely lacking in force or sensibility).

I'd love to hear one arguement on how Mathis sitting on the bench half the tournament allowed him to be more valuable to us than JOB moving the ball from our defensive third to offensive third and breaking up attacks. I thought JOB did an outstanding job against Germany and so did Reyna. It wasn't their fault that we couldn't finish the 4-5 good chances we had, that the linesman blew the offside call on Donovan, and that Friedal can't win airballs in the 6 yard box.

 

I like Mathis but there was no way that his chubby a$$ was the MVP. If he hadn't torn his ACL, he very well could have been the MVP, but he was in no shape to play that much...ever heard of an exercise bike, Clint? He scored a great goal, but besides that, played pretty lackluster, kind of like how Figo looked for Portugal. Just not the same player that he had been.

As far as I am concerned, the three top candidates would have been Freidel, Sanneh and JOB. I picked Sanneh because without him, Friedel would have faced about 100% more shots. He showed only a fraction of his usual sloppiness playing the ball forward, and his first touch was consistently true. He was also much more patient. I attribute his stunning performance to his transition to Bundesliga play. He started a whole season, and played for a coach who unexplainably had full faith in him. I saw a few of his games on FSW and it was amazing. He was playing in the middle, and he owned it. Playing on the side, you can't really tell how good he is in the air. He is good offensively, but on defense he is incredible. He was getting up a foot over the forwards to head the ball away. In my opinion, and seeing as how Pope will probably retire, it would be a HUGE mistake not to make Sanneh our central midfielder for 2006.

JOB was all over the place, and picked up everyone else's slack, as well as breaking the ice in a crucial match. Without that goal it could have been a VERY different trip for us. In four years he will be awesome and a world-class player, if he isn't already. I would love to see him play in the Premiership...the Dutch league is sagging.