It is almost time for award season in Major League Soccer. On Monday, the league revealed the players, coaches and officials who are nominated for this year’s awards.
FC Dallas forward Petar Musa is the lone club representative on the list of award nominees. Musa is in the running for the Newcomer of the Year award. Musa leads FC Dallas in scoring with 15 goals this season. He’ll go up against guys like Luis Suarez from Miami, Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil from LA, and Emil Forsberg of New York.
Surprisingly, FC Dallas doesn’t have any other nominations for awards this year. No MVP candidate (not that they’d have one), no Defender of the Year (same as MVP, they wouldn’t have one), and most surprisingly, no Goalkeeper of the Year nominee. That’s right, Maarten Paes did not earn a nomination, while guys who played on teams worse than FC Dallas did. I don’t get it either, folks.
Per MLS, clubs determine nominees and can nominate a maximum of two players for certain awards.
MLS Year-End Awards are determined via voting from three groups (each one-third):
MLS players
MLS club technical staff
Select media members representing local and national outlets who consistently covered the 2024 MLS regular season1
Voting will open on October 7 and conclude on October 21, shortly after Decision Day (end of MLS regular season).
For years, I had a vote on the annual awards but MLS began limiting the pool of media voters starting last year. So, when they say ‘local outlets,’ they don’t mean blogs like this one anymore. Kind of a shame if you ask me but I’m happy to not have to figure out which referee to vote for each season. ↩
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