2012 "Team of the Week" MLS Soccer

Throughout the the year I kept tabs on Major League Soccer's "Team of the Week" (TotW) feature on their website MLSsoccer.com. How it works is that their staff selects a team of 11 players each week that they feel played the best over the previous week. On top of those eleven, they also pick another 20 (or so) players and place them under the "Honorable Mention (HM)" category.

It's not perfect. MLS generally uses this feature to generate social interest and do little beyond listing out the players with a short blurb. No historical reference or player tracking. Once it's posted, it's posted and they move on.

Regardless. It can be a valuable feature. All totalled - about 10% of all players week to week get mentioned in the MLS TotW / HM feature.

There were 182 different players and coaches to make the site's TotW out of a possible 348 open starting XI slots + one coach (should have been 408 but MLS got weird with this feature between weeks 13 and 15). There were another 130 players that made the Honorable Mention category.

I tracked: 312 different players and coaches, 929 mentions.

Here are the players with over 9 mentions (TotW + HM = Mentions).

MENTIONS: NAME : (TotW only)

14 : Robbie Keane (4)
12 : Chris Wondolowski (8)
12 : Fredy Montero (3)
11 : Landon Donovan(5)
10 : Chris Pontius (5)
10 : Brad Davis (5)
9 : Marvin Chávez (5)
9 : Dan Kennedy (3)
9 : Andy Gruenebaum (3)

I don't think it's out of bounds to think that Total Mentions, as a subjective list like Team of the Week, can be used general barometer of quality. It passes the smell test as a measurement of quality. More value can be found in that it will also tell you who the league favors (bigger names get more attention). Smaller market teams might get overlooked in these lists but with a league of only 19 teams there you can only hide for so long.

The only player to separate themselves from the rest of the pack as far as TotW mentions was Chris Wondolowski with 8. Five players made the team 5 times (in the list above + Lee Nguyen).

Here is how it looks with the Crew ganked out. On the left are the number of times a player was mentioned. On the (right) is TotW mentions only.

9 : Andy Gruenebaum (3)
7 : Eddie Gaven (3)
7 : Jairo Arrieta (2)
5 : Chad Marshall (1)
5 : Josh Williams
4 : Federico Higuaín (3)
4 : Justin Meram
3 : Emilio Rentería (1)

2 : MLS LEAGUE MEDIAN

2 : Robert Warzycha*
2 : Shaun Francis
2 : Tony Tchani
1 : Aaron Schoenfeld
1 : Chris Birchall
1 : Danny O'Rourke
1 : Dilly Duka
1 : Milovan Mirosevic
1 : Sebastian Miranda

* One coach picked per week. More on that later on.

Here is number of TotW (best XI only) by club.

MENTIONS : TEAM

35 : San Jose Earthquakes*
25 : Real Salt Lake*
23 : Chicago Fire*
23 : Seattle Sounders*
22 : D.C. United*
22 : LA Galaxy*
20 : New York Red Bulls
19 : FC Dallas
18 : Houston Dynamo*
18 : New England Revolution
17 : Philadelphia Union
17 : Sporting Kansas City*
16 : Montreal Impact
15 : Columbus Crew
14 : Portland Timbers
13 : Vancouver Whitecaps*
12 : Colorado Rapids
10 : Chivas USA
9 : Toronto FC

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Alright. A few metrics here be.
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How many minutes it takes to get a MLS "mention" (includes TotW and HM). On the right I put total mentions again.

MINS PLAYED PER MENTION : NAME : MENTIONS

219 : Jairo Arrieta 7
240 : Justin Meram 4
251 : Federico Higuaín 4
254 : Shaun Francis 2
298 : Aaron Schoenfeld 1
324 : Andy Gruenebaum 9
427 : Eddie Gaven 7
429 : Chad Marshall 5
486 : Josh Williams 5
514 : Emilio Rentería 3

644 : LEAGUE MEDIAN

667 : Tony Tchani 2
1073 : Dilly Duka 1
1515 : Chris Birchall 1
1603 : Danny O'Rourke 1
2140 : Milovan Mirosevic 1
2881 : Sebastian Miranda 1

Crew players that didn't make TotW or HM this year, of the guys that saw minutes: Speas, Anor, Mendes, Grossman, Gehrig, Finlay, James, George, Lampson, Vukovic, Vargas. Fair or not; of that list, the only one to play over 1000 mins and not get a mention was Vukovic.

Here are some notable names from the rest of the league in terms of how many minutes it takes to earn a team of the week mention:

162 : Alan Gordon
180 : Robbie Keane
205 : Landon Donovan
212 : Marvin Chávez

All these guys had over 1000 minutes.

Not much to go on here with Managers. Ben Olsen was the only one to get mentioned 3 times. Warzycha got mentioned twice but so did 8 others.

One thing that interested me was how much a "Team of the Week" and "Honorable Mention" were worth. You can, if you figure that there are a possible 9044 eligible players generated by from 19 teams playing 34 matches with three available subs.

9044 total slots / 363 TotW picks = a 25 Share
9044 total slots / 581 HM = a 15 Share

Not perfect but close enough for a feature like TofW, so by that logic here are your top 6 MLS performers as picked by MLS themselves:

268 : Chris Wondolowski
254 : Robbie Keane
220 : Landon Donovan
213 : Fredy Montero
194 : Chris Pontius
194 : Brad Davis

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Some interesting things to be found in regards to Major League Soccer's "Team of the Week". If you have questions, you can contact me via twitter @HelltowBeer or email at: ljbaby654@gmail.com

If you are interested in looking over MLS Team of the Week and Honorable Mentions you can find my data HERE.

As with anything, there is an error rate. With this mine happens to be around +/-5%. Reason being; MLSsoccer.com doesn't post this data other than a "conversational" form. They also, because of international breaks and a strange unbalanced schedule, skipped or combined weeks. I had to manually pull this together. It's close enough.