MLS All Star XI Revealed: Seattle Gets Toronto’d

The MLS All Star XI for the July 29 game against Everton was revealed today. This would be, again, the eleven players chosen by fans, the media, players and coaches/GMs as MLS’s best options to take on a non-big-four EPL team in preseason form.

The results? Seattle got Toronto’d.

Last year it was Toronto fans who packed the voter picks with their guys; six of the voter-chosen eleven were gents from BMO.

Sadly for Toronto fans, the All Star XI is only 25% picked by fans. The remainder is media (25%), players (25%) and coaches and GMs (25%.) When the final votes were tallied last year, precisely zero Toronto players made the XI. (Although the coach did later throw Toronto fans a bone by using one of his picks to add Toronto player Jim Brennan.)

This year, same story, except that the new Most Passionate Fans on the Block were the ones stuffing the ballot box. Most recent reports before voting ended were that eight of the voter-picked XI were Seattle Sounders.

Results today, however, show that the other 75% of the voters don’t share Seattle’s soft spot for players like James Riley.

Unlike Toronto last year, though, Seattle got a couple of picks. The other voters apparently do have soft spots for goalkeeper Kasey Keller and midfielder Freddie Ljungberg, because they both made the cut. (As a Seattle fan, I might argue that holding midfielder Osvaldo Alonso or central defender Jhon Kennedy Hurtado have had stronger seasons thus far than Ljungberg. But Ljungberg has been solid, plus he creates that whole Butts-in-Seats thing, so I’m not going to quibble.)

Next step in the process is that All Star coach Dominic Kinnear will pick five players, and MLS Commissioner Don Garber will pick two, thus creating the final roster. Those players will be announced next week.

(My guess is they’ll throw at least one bone to hosts Real Salt Lake. Kyle Beckerman, anybody?)

The All Star XI, from the back:

Kasey Keller (Sounders FC)
Chad Marshall (Columbus Crew)
Wilman Conde (Chicago Fire)
Shalrie Joseph (New England Revs)
Geoff Cameron (Houston)
Stuart Holden (Houston)
Guillermo Barros Schelotto (Columbus Crew)
Freddie Ljungberg (Sounders FC)
Landon Donovan (LA Galaxy)
Conor Casey (Colorado Rapids)
Dwayne De Rosario (Toronto FC)

What do you think? Any glaring omissions? I find it interesting that Ljungberg and Schelotto are the only DPs on the list. No Juan Pablo Angel (not surprising this season,) no Luciano Emilio, no Cuauhtemoc Blanco. And, of course, no David Beckham. This tells me that we’re past the starstruck phase in MLS, and play is now winning out over names

A good thing.

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Category: World Football