With the season winding down or complete for some I wanted to take a little time and honor my best XI for the season. I'm interested to read your team and your thoughts. Heres mine: GK: Hahnemann LB: Pearce CB: DeMerit CB: Onyewu RB: Simek MF: Convey MF: Fielhaber MF: Reyna MF: Lewis ST: Zewe ST: McBride Honable mentions: Beasley Keller Whitbread Kazlauskas Cherundolo Spector Berhalter Bocanegra Freidel Coiner Enochs Player of the Year: Convey Young YA of the Year: (tie) Simek & Fielhaber
I completely disagree with you one a few choices. Friedel is still the best American goal keeper, period. Cherundolo is easily our best outside back at this point. Also how do you put Pearce ahead of Spector?
My Best XI this year would be Friedel, Onyewu, Berhalter, Spector, Bocanegra, Cherundolo, Convey, Reyna, Beasley, Lewis, and McBride. Those were the best 10 field players plus a goalie. Maybe Demerit in there, but I have never seen him play.
The way I picked was player importance to their club combined with how well they performed all season. Friedel, I agree is the best keeper, but the Marcus choice was more to do with promotion and number of clean sheets. Pearce is more important to his team than Spector is to Charlton. That's not a knock on Spector by any means, he just played inconsistent at times. Cherundolo had a good season and is extremely important to Hannover but injuries and a bad spell moved him to honorable mention.
Using your criteria, I'd have to go with keller at GK (I much prefer Hahnemann, but this has been a stunner of a year from KK) Defense: Can I put Gibbs out left? Gooch and Boca in the middle, stevie C. MF: Beas, Reyna, Convey, Lewis (and hope the field slants heavily). ST: McBride and Rossi. Hon mention: Demerit, ConnorC, simek, Whitbred, Enochs, Marcus and BF. edit to add: POY probably has to be Keller. I watched him quite a bit this year and really thought gladbach was a pretty bad team. For long stretches, they were just hanging on, largely because of him, to 0-0. Some games, he was flat out amazing. Galdbach would finally get a break, take a first shot of the game and it would go in. Watched them win 2-0 once when i swear they crossed midway maybe three times.
Quite frankly, keeper was a toss up. Kasey, Marcus, and Brad have been amazing. They are, in most respects, the spine of their squads. Friedel has been off his rocker, almost single handedly keeping Blackburn in contention for a UEFA spot. Keller, likewise, the confidence he has shown in front of a so-so defense makes me relieved his going to be between this pipes this summer. Hahnemann, as you know pulled off some amazing saves and organized a flawless backline in route to a historic season for the Royals. He shook my head in awe a couple of times during the 23 match unbeaten run. As I said, keeper was a toss up and Marcus got the nod based on the historic nature of Reading's season and the mind boggling number of clean sheets.
-----------------------Keller ---Cherundolo----Gooch----Bocanegra----Spector -----------------------Reyna -----Beasley----------------------------Lewis ----------------------Convey --------------McBride---------Rossi
I don't like it when people give individual awards based on relative value of a player to a team. I don't understand how it is interesting to look at how good a player is only in relation to his team. Those types of evaluations could simply come down to team depth at given positions or similarly arbitrary variables. When I see individual awards, I want to see the evaluation of the best player for that year, period. In light of this, I don't understand how Simek, Feilhaber, or Pearce make this first team. Cherundolo, Beasley, and Spector were clearly better players this year even considering injuries or their relative importance to their team.
Lighten up. These are my picks for team of the year. Its not the national team and should be taken with a grain of salt. Beasley had a sophomore slump at PSV, no big deal. He played inconsistent at times and looked a bit out of sync. Cherundolo, had a great season but had a stretch were he was hurt and not playing up to par. He is finishing strong, though. Spector, no matter what you say or think played well at times and other times looked out of place. He has growing pains, that's all. Simek was, in all accounts, one of best players on an otherwise crappy team. He shut others down in which his team couldn't. He's shown to be a good prospect. Pearce, showed extremely well defending both individually and on the ball and made some very timely runs forward helping his team to success. He's one of the better young players in the Danish Superliga. I really shouldn't have to justify my picks. All these players for the best XI to the honorable mention had great seasons. Just a few short years ago we couldn't string together 6 Yanks who got significant minutes with their European clubs. This thread was created for fun and I'm smiling at the number of Yanks who have had great seasons.
Oh, I'm light . I was just stating why I disagree with the criteria, that's all. It's just been a pet peeve of mine, and I remain peeved. But your point about smiling on the current YA talent as compared to just a few years ago is well taken. It's nice to see such great improvement over such a short period of time.
In one way I'm glad my picks are argued.That just simply means we have choices instead of clear cut picks. It is nice, isn't it?
Demerit, to me, makes best YA underdowg by far. Worst performer of the soccer year? Forgive me Parm, but Carlos Elliot.
--------------Friedel----Keller-------------- Dolo------Gooch---------Demerit---Spector DFB------Reyna----------Convey-----Lewis ------------------McBride----------------- I see no other way to do this then to split the goalkeeping position between Keller and Friedel -- each has been absolutely superb for their teams each at the highest level. Marcus would also be deserving of this award but I put him just a notch below based on the level of the competetion. I did not see anyone else deserving the nod at forward aside from BMB this year -- if you put a gun to my head I'd suppose I'd move Beasley up there but his performance on the year was, frankly, somewhat shaky though still certainly deserving of inclusion based on PSVs fine showing. I don't see how anyone can leave Spector off their squad -- he clearly demonstrated he belonged as a player in the EPL with several fine showings for Charlton including one where he beautifully shut down Cisse -- I think he along with BMB, Dolo Gooch & Convey are the only locks on the squad.
If importance to team is a key factor, you should consider adding Ian Joy and Joe Zewe to your squads.
---------------------Friedel------------------ -----------Gooch----DeMerit--Bocanegra------ ----Cherundolo-----------------------Spector- ------------------Reyna-----Lewis------------ --------Beasley--------------------Convey---- ---------------------McBride------------------ The only way I could make it work. Keeper is the hardest I think, because MH and KK also deserve it. But Blackburn has no business where they are, and that makes the difference. I also hesitated on adding Demerit because, in all honesty, he's looked absolutely horrible in the last few games that Setanta has carried. But, he came out of nowhere really, so he deserves it.