Welcome back to the Thursday Q&A series, where we focus on one particular topic – today's being the Armchair Analyst's midseason awards – and ask you to react, share, and discuss in the comments section. However, feel free to ask about anything game-related (MLS, USL, NASL, USMNT, CanMNT, etc.) over the next several hours.
Best XI:
GK:David Ousted (VAN)
LB:DaMarcus Beasley (HOU)
CB:Bobby Boswell (DC), Laurent Ciman (MTL)
RB:Raymon Gaddis (PHI)
DM:Dax McCarty (NY)
MF:Benny Feilhaber (SKC)
MF:Javier Morales (RSL)
FW:Sebastian Giovinco (TFC)
FW:Kei Kamara (CLB)
FW:Fabian Castillo (FCD)
Huge apologies to Perry Kitchen, Kaká, Ethan Finlay, Kendall Waston, Michael Bradley, Tyrone Mears, Kemar Lawrence, Clarence Goodson, Juninho, Omar Gonzalez, Matt Besler, Matt Hedges, Adam Kwarasey and Darlington Nagbe, but one of my rules for a "Best XI" is that it has to be a workable lineup.
Goalkeeper of the Year: Ousted
He's been great. No doubt about it.
But as great as he's been, the No. 1 'keeper spot would be Bill Hamid's if Hamid didn't keep getting hurt. He's arguably been good enough to have a spot in the MVP race, which never happens for goalkeepers.
Still, this is Ousted's award (for now).
Rookie of the Year:Cyle Larin (Orlando City)
And it's not actually close. Tip of the hat to Fatai Alashe, Matt Polster, Amadou Dia and Tim Parker, though.
Defender of the Year: Ciman
Lots of names in the mix here, but at times Ciman is the only guy preventing the Impact's descent from "Hey, they're pretty good!" to "Hey, this team's a train wreck!" He hasn't been perfect, but then again, who is?
Young Player of the Year:Matt Miazga (RBNY)
This is my own category, which I've made up for players 21 or under. Miazga could and maybe should be pushing for full national team caps by the end of the season.
Kekuta Manneh, Alvas Powell and a few others are in this conversation as well.
I voted Obafemi Martins for MVP last year.
I did so because, where there are two or more equally matched (or nearly so) players, I by default go with the guy who's on the best team. So as great as Robbie Keane was, and as indispensible as Lee Nguyen was, Martins was the one who I deemed "Most Valuable." He led the Sounders to a trophy, after all, and that's the ultimate value, right? Winning is what counts, and is the ultimate tiebreaker in my eyes.
So with that preamble... Benny Feilhaber is the MLS MVP so far in 2015. I suspect I'm in the minority for feeling that way, since Sebastian Giovinco has been a goal-scoring, headline-owning menace for large swathes of the season, and is the main reason Toronto FC look like they'll make the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
But Feilhaber's been more valuable, and I'd argue that he's also been more consistent and a better all-around player.
They both have impressive-as-hell counting stats, Giovinco with 12 goals and 9 assists from up top, and Feilhaber with 6 and 10 from midfield. They've each created 26 chances from the run of play, which puts them among the league leaders. Overall chance creation is also relatively even, with Feilhaber having created 42 and Giovinco 38.
- RSL vs. Sporting KC | Friday, 11 pm (UniMas | UDN | UnivisionDeportes.com)
The biggest difference comes in "big chance" creation, a metric Opta uses to track chances they feel should lead to a goal. Feilhaber has created nine, which leads the league and is as many as or more than six other MLS teams. Giovinco has created a very respectable four chances, which groups him with guys like Bradley Wright-Phillips, Hector Jimenez and Gabriel Torres.
In terms of how much of the chance creation burden they share respective to their individual teams, Feilhaber noses Giovinco out by a few percentage points. In terms of "big chance" creation, he again dominates, having created half of Sporting's big chances, while Giovinco's created fewer than a third of TFC's.
Balancing that out is, of course, Giovinco's superior goal-scoring output. Scoring goals is an unabiguously good thing, but what's underrated is the ability to find a ton of shots - it is a skill, and one that Giovinco excels in. His 106 shots lead the league by a large margin.
He is a super star in every sense.
But so is Feilhaber, who is doing an eye-popping amount of work on the defensive side of the ball considering his attacking workload.
Here are his numbers when compared to his peer group - guys who are pure midfielders, and their respective team's primary chance creators. No. 10s, in other words:
| Player | Recoveries | Minutes | Recoveries per 90 | Chances Created | CCs, Open Play | Big Chance Created |
| Benny Feilhaber | 130 | 1598 | 7.3 | 42 | 26 | 9 |
| Sacha Kljestan | 116 | 1518 | 6.9 | 32 | 28 | 3 |
| Harry Shipp | 106 | 1662 | 5.7 | 42 | 25 | 3 |
| Lee Nguyen | 101 | 1666 | 5.5 | 27 | 24 | 5 |
| Matias Perez Garcia | 90 | 1309 | 6.2 | 46 | 20 | 3 |
| Darlington Nagbe | 87 | 1696 | 4.6 | 45 | 44 | 2 |
| Pedro Morales | 83 | 1182 | 6.3 | 42 | 26 | 4 |
| Mauro Diaz | 82 | 1314 | 5.6 | 34 | 26 | 4 |
| Federico Higuain | 76 | 1658 | 4.1 | 45 | 33 | 5 |
| Ignacio Piatti | 72 | 1362 | 4.8 | 32 | 28 | 2 |
| Kaká | 69 | 1655 | 3.8 | 33 | 24 | 2 |
| Cristian Maidana | 69 | 1336 | 4.6 | 53 | 37 | 3 |
| Javier Morales | 68 | 1135 | 5.4 | 54 | 39 | 6 |
| Alex Lopez | 66 | 947 | 6.3 | 26 | 23 | 2 |
| Dillon Powers | 65 | 1330 | 4.4 | 36 | 29 | 6 |
Now, numbers are never a rock-solid, iron-clad argument in and of themselves. You could argue that Feilhaber benefits from a Sporting defensive scheme that emphasizes his fitness and natural nose for recoveries while, say, Federico Higuain simply isn't asked to do that sort of work for the Crew.
And to me, that's both A) good coaching; and B) the whole damn point. The system that Sporting play -- the one that has them atop the league on points per game -- exists because of Feilhaber's ability to fill crucial roles at a "Best In Show" level on both sides of the ball. He is their primary distributor, their primary winner of 50/50 balls, and their primary creator.
This is all of it in one package, a momentary lapse in which he turns a seemingly innocuous turnover into a goal:
And that, to me, is the work of an MVP.
Ok folks, thanks for keeping me company while I played with my cats. Let's do it again next week!
