Some Major League Soccer fans weren’t pleased to hear the news that Lionel Messi was one of three finalists for the MLS Newcomer of the Year award. While the Argentine World Cup winner dominated headlines, he only made six MLS appearances.
Messi joins Atlanta United striker Giorgos Giakoumakis and St. Louis City midfielder Eduard Löwen as the finalists for the newcomer award.
Here’s a brief overview of the three players’ MLS stats this season.
Giakoumakis
- Appearances: 27
- Minutes: 1,792
- Goals: 17
- Assists: 0
Löwen
- Appearances: 29
- Minutes: 2,310
- Goals: 6
- Assists: 9
Messi
- Appearances: 6
- Minutes: 372
- Goals: 1
- Assists: 2
Only MLS games are considered for the award which means Messi’s Leagues Cup run and contributions aren’t supposed to be considered for the award. The criteria is strictly based off the MLS regular season.
Fans weren’t impressed.
Some people need to seriously lose their voting rights on anything MLS related after this joke.
Messi: 6GP, 4GS, 1G, 2A. pic.twitter.com/EQPwLDLpjQ— Michele Giannone (@MicheleG3) October 26, 2023
How can you argue he even belongs on this list? 6 matches played, only one goal? He has shown that he’s human in regular season play
— x- Trev (@Trevorplummer) October 26, 2023
I love this team and all but….
Let’s be serious… 6 games is NOT enough for this. There’s WAY more deserving players to this.Are we seriously not going to have any respect to those awards?
— JP Alvarez (@HeyItsJPP) October 26, 2023
The Athletic’s Tom Bogert did make a good point that the media might not be the sole people to blame for the nomination. Media members, coaches, technical directors, general managers AND all MLS first-team players got to vote.
There’s a good chance that Messi’s inclusion was due to players casting their pick for him.
People love to blame the media for these votes but I BET the player vote had a higher share for messi than the media did.
I’d actually bet something but I don’t have anything creative at the top of my mind. Any thoughts friends? https://t.co/AikYsw59Ah— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) October 26, 2023
There were rumors earlier in the season that Messi could have been a candidate for the Landon Donovan MLS MVP award which would have been extremely ridiculous. Thankfully that rumor didn’t come true as Luciano Acosta, Thiago Almada and Denis Bouanga were named the three MVP finalists.
Winners of the awards will be announced in the coming weeks during the MLS Cup Playoffs.
