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SBI MLS Player of the Week: Benny Feilhaber

BennyFeilhaber1 (ISIPhotos.com)

Photo by Howard C. Smith/ISIPhotos.com

By IVES GALARCEP

On a night when returning U.S. Men’s National team standouts Graham Zusi and Matt Besler turned in outstanding showings just days after playing key parts in the U.S. team’s tie vs. Mexico, it might have been easy to overlook the impressive night of their World Cup veteran teammate.

Benny Feilhaber turned in his best game of the season, and the kind of game Sporting KC was hoping for when they traded for him last winter, when he helped set up both goals and finished a thoroughly complete performance in KC’s 2-0 win over previously unbeaten Montreal. His performance made him SBI’s MLS Player of the Week.

Feilhaber beat out Zusi, Portland’s Will Johnson,  Real Salt Lake’s Luis Gil and New York’s Thierry Henry for this week’s honors.

What did you think of Feilhaber’s performance? Which MLS player impressed you the most in MLS Week Five?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. I didn’t see KC’s game. But in the other games I did see, Mike Magee had a great game for LA and was the best of the lot. (Villlareal is getting all the attention for a nifty finish.) Besides scoring and giving Donavon what should have been an assist on a chance Donavon should have finished, he was popping up in the box getting shots and was unlucky not to have scored a second goal . He also cleared the ball effectively when Toronto had free kicks into the box.

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    • FWIW, since he has come to SKC, he has put his head down, done the work, said the right things, and is slowly winning our fanbase over. He seems like a genuinely good guy.

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  2. I remember when it was a lock that the starting center mid for the 2010 World Cup(especially after the Gold Cup goal) was going to be Benny and Bradley…then Benny’s career took a nose dive. Another could have been for the national team.

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    • what??? Benny was never a lock to start and was almost ALWAYS the super sub. nose dive my ass

      I’d bet you haven’t seen him play in 5 games since 2010 to comne up with a comment like that

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      • Well Benny was being groomed as Van der Vaart’s replacement at Hamburg when he was there, but then took off to play on the worst team in Premier League history.

    • Considering that Benny’s Gold Cup golazo was in 2007 then maybe you’ll understand why I say I never saw anyone get more mileage out of one goal than Benny..

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  3. Benny played awesome, I’d love to him round into form again. I also think it’s awesome that we had multiple young Americans play amazingly well this week (Gil, McBean, Villareal) and it barely even registers. That’s a great sign that we are starting to really develop youth! To have multiple 18-20 year olds starting in the league really bodes well for the future.

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  4. This is why Ives gets more respect than most others. Unless you watch the games, you would have no idea whether Benny had a good game. Not often a guy gets player of the week without registering on the box sheet.

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    • +1. I’m sick of MLS giving PotW honors to the highest scorer 90% of the time. Just cuz you score a brace doesn’t make you the best player. Sure, Hat tricks don’t happen that often, and are pretty hard performances to beat, but PotW needs to be differentiated from highest scorer of the week.

      I feel the same about Man of the Match honors.

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      • 100% agree. A striker can have a lousy game overall but get accolades for a single goal. That’s usually not the case for defenders or midfielders.

        The guy Benny replaced is a great example of that maxim–Roger Espinoza almost never registers on the score sheet, but he was a vital cog to the SKC’s 433 system over the past few years before departing for Wigan.

      • Agree in general with what you’re saying but in this particular instance, I would have given in to Will Johnson.

      • Shane, Eric and K-Town,

        Your three posts illustrate why the award is often given to the guy scoring the goal(s).

        It is possible to be the best player on the field without having a goal or an assist but, in many cases, you will never get people to agree on one guy.

        In my experience if only one guy is performing head and shoulders above his team mates, oftentimes, his team is probably going to lose.

        Winning teams usually have more than a few guys playing in a noteworthy fashion,

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