Top Stories

Magee named 2013 MLS MVP

Mike Magee Chicago Fire (Chicago FIre)

By DAN KARELL

For Mike Magee, returning home made all the difference.

Major League Soccer announced on Thursday morning that Magee has been named the league’s Most Valuable Player, taking home the award for the first time in his 11-year professional career. The Chicago Fire forward won in a landslide over former Los Angeles Galaxy teammate Robbie Keane, Marco Di Vaio, and Tim Cahill.

Magee finished the 2013 season with 21 goals and four assists, 15 of those goals coming after a midseason trade that sent him from the Galaxy to the Fire, returning the 29-year-old to his hometown for the first time since joining MLS in 2003. Magee nearly single-handedly led the Fire to a playoff place, only to miss out of the MLS Cup playoffs on the final day of the season as the New York Red Bulls pummeled the Fire, 5-2.

The former Metrostars/Red Bulls and Galaxy forward accrued a weighted total of 98.81 when combining the votes from clubs, media, and the players. Keane finished in a distant second, followed by Di Vaio and Cahill. Magee’s honor makes him the second consecutive American to win the award following Chris Wondolowski’s 27-goal season last year.

Magee will receive the award this afternoon at a ceremony in Kansas City.

——-

What do you think of this selection? Do you agree with Magee as MVP? Who would you have voted for?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Happy for Mike.
    but

    I’d like to see a category like ” Player of the Year” — Candidates voted on only
    MLS Players. Winner gains the respect etc of his peers on the pitch during the season.

    MVP definition gets muddled when the player is traded in the season he wins in. For one team he ‘most valuable to get rid of’ and another ‘most valuable to buy mid season’

    Reply
  2. The most valuable player to the lame-brained MLS is obviously Clint Dempsey who they paid what? $7 million or something for (plus wages)? Good luck getting that investment back (even when you try to manipulate the schedule in his favor.) As for Magee, who votes for this award?

    Reply
  3. I’m happy for Mike that he won, he’s a great guy and a model professional.

    It’s interesting to note however that without the much maligned trade, he would not have been MVP. The only difference between Magee and Rogers is that one was better than expected this year, and one was (much) worse than expected this year.

    Things happen, LA can’t get it right all the time. Look at the Cudicini signing! Looked like a great move but he turned out to be as bad on the field as Rogers. Then look back beyond that to Ricketts been let go to keep Saunders, no one thought that was a bad move when they made it. Now Saunders is who knows where and Ricketts is the best rated keeper in the league. Things don’t always work out the way you planned.

    Reply
    • LA has really made some stinker trades the last couple years, haven’t they? They’re due for a solid signing. I’m hoping Husidic fits the bill.

      Reply
    • Everyone in LA knew that dumping Ricketts and going with Saunders was a bad move, but understood that it was necessary because it cleared about 200K in salary cap space.

      Everyone was very much in favor of bringing Rogers to the Galaxy, knowing that we needed a width in our attack. And public opinion was very much in favor of the Galaxy becoming the first team in the New World to have an openly gay player. We’re liberal like that.

      But NO ONE in LA wanted this trade, except for the two guys involved in it, and, apparently, Chris Klein and Don Garber. It’s been a disaster, and this Magee winning the MVP only makes it more painful, since he was not only the fans’ favorite, but now he’s incontrovertibly one of the best players in the league.

      Reply
  4. Some might grumble that Magee isn’t as talented or high profile as Di Viao or Robbie Keane. The truth is, he’s been incredibly clutch the last three seasons, and this year he stepped it up a notch, first in Donovan’s absence and then as the leader of Chicago.

    In MLS, this season, he justly deserves the reward.

    Reply
  5. I heard on a podcast that his personal W/L/T record put him one point off the supporters sheild,
    so can we quit the talk of not making the playoffs? We should.

    Glad Magic Mike won.

    Reply
  6. As an LA Galaxy fan, I am 100% sincerely stoked for Tits Magee. This is the clearest “What the eff were you thinking, LA?” message that could possibly be sent, and I feel rightfully vindicated in my criticism of the LA FO. Yeah, but “Magee would have still been a bit player at LA blah blah blah!” Wrong. He was basically our playoff MVP the last two years, and he was our leading scorer before LA jettisoned him for the one whose name we mustn’t speak. This was obviously Magee’s breakout year. Hats off to Mike, and screw ya, Chris Klein.

    Reply
  7. Oh, and 2-3-4 are high-end DPs …. But of course DPs are washed-up Europeans who are only here to loaf around the field for large paydays.

    Reply
    • “In November 2013, Republic of Ireland national football team captain Robbie Keane revealed that he would recommend Magee to Martin O’Neill as a possible call-up.”

      At his age he should go play for Ireland. My question would be whether he’d require a one-time switch because he was a US YNT player.

      I think this is no domestic leverage in our setup with our talent. He’s like TT or Wondo, good guy to have on your MLS team and a gamer at that level but not very useful as a senior international because that requires more than soccer smarts and hustle. But then Klinsi likes Wondo so who knows.

      Reply
  8. Magee is a decent player but I would definitely trade him for a social pariah to make a sportscenter mention. Sure, people probably prefer watching him to a natural oddity or circus sideshow. But who runs Barter Town anyway??

    Reply
  9. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.

    I have a dream that one day my four little children will live in a nation where its soccer league doesn’t play on fields with football lines on it. That we can stage a playoff without taking multiple two week breaks between fixtures.

    I have a dream that sons of Western Conference fans and Eastern Conference fans will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and vote for an MVP that hasn’t been traded during the season. That MVP candidates will be judged by the content of their on-field ability and not the number of goals they have scored.

    I have a dream today!

    And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, Free at last! Free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

    Reply
  10. Here’s a Mike Magee fact I look like Bradley Cooper but no I don’t act.Except when I’m on the pitch where I act like a champ and you act like a b*tch.

    Reply
  11. I would have gone with di Vaio or Valeri because their teams made the playoffs behind similar production. But Magee had a great year so no big complaints.

    Magee most certainly deserves some sort of Phoenix Is Risen award, the trophy for which would consist of the mythological bird with both wings tuned back to the old team in what the sharper among us would discern were the shape of middle fingers. Or middle claws. Whatever.

    Reply
      • easy on the “now we have a league that can be taken seriously” comments… you take what Stepp Blatter says seriously? the president of FIFA – the governing board of Futbol!

        The MVP is a vote by people who have different opinions… look at the voting for the Balon the Oro – opinions go all over the place. Part of the process. If your guy doesn’t win it… its ok… it doesn’t make their performance (league in this case) any less credible!

      • have you seen the Premier League players of the year? If you disregard MLS because of how it chooses its awards, you must think that league is a joke too.

        They are awards — who cares who wins them. They really don’t mean much at all, and they reflect the league only to a certain degree.

    • Also the over-reliance on goals by MVP voters is similar the the over-reliance on wins by Cy-Young voters in MLB. Portland was trash last year but became a contender this year with Valeri (although you could certainly argue Porter, W. Johnson, and other helped). In 2013 when you can watch all the game we no longer have to just pick someone with lots of goals.

      Reply
      • I think some tangible stats production is necessary to be in the discussion popularity wise but I agree that playmakers should be considered. I’d point out Schelotto in his prime won MVP but agree it’s an uphill struggle for playmakers to compete against goalscorers, even if Wondo’s SJ routinely fell before Davis’ Houston or Zusi’s KC last couple years, for example.

      • It wasn’t just Magee’s goal production. His leadership and attitude changed the entire culture of the team.

    • By my count it’s two within the last three years. Disturbing trend to say the least. I guess this is what happens when your league doesn’t have the world’s best players. No way LeBron would ever get traded in season. That sort of thing would never happen to a league’s most valuable player.

      Reply
      • Very true, but what other leagues would have a guy like Magee, who’s a solid player but never been anything MVP like before, suddenly turn it on like he did at 29. I am not sure what this means for the league, but just different from say the NBA.

    • I want nothing more than for MLS to succeed, but nothing says Mickey Mouse League more than continually voting guys for MVP you aren’t considered valuable enough to keep by the teams they start the season with and the teams that they finish the season with miss the playoffs. For the love of God can’t we just start an offensive player of the year award for guys like this?

      Reply
      • The MVP award is for the player most VALUABLE to his team. There is NO question that Magee was most valuable to the Fire. Just because LA was foolish enough to trade him, which considering how much he had done for them last year and up to the point he was traded this year, does not mean his contribution should be downgraded. If LA had any sense, they would have kept him and might be in the MLS Cup Final on Saturday. But they made a marketing move, I don’t know what else can explain trading someone playing as well as Magee for Rogers, and didn’t have the needed firepower going forward.

      • magee WANTED to go home….to chicago, so when the opportunity presented itself he asked to please be allowed to go. LA didn’t trade him just because.
        other than that, i agree with your post.

      • sadly there’s more to it than “Mike wanted to go home” as LA (& the league) has been spinning it since.

        Landon said there was more to it that would ever be mentioned to the media, something he’d save for his book.

        Magee saw his opportunity as the league was pushing to get Rogers story to the media. It’s not like Magee was miserable in LA and was homesick so he forced LA to make a move. He was perfectly happy scoring goals on a team with players he loved playing with.

        Clearly this was a marketing effort to have the first openly gay MLS player on a team in LA. While they paraded him around on tv show after tv show, Magee was dropping goals week in and week out.

      • Who cares if Magee wanted to go home. LA had him under contract and should have done what was best for the team. Best being defined as, “Not trading him for Robbie Rogers”

      • Gareth Bale was voted best footballer in the EPL last year and his team finished a full 17 points back of the title.

      • this is pretty short sighted. to me it’s more an indictment of the FO of LA that a guy like this was let go. He was the Scotty Pippen to the MIchael Jordans of Keane Beckham and Donovan–the guy you failed to cover cause you were focused on the DPs that would punish you for it.

        I’m glad he’s at a club where he can truly shine and not be underrated by knuckleheads like you.

      • Making the playoffs or not is irrelevant. With the extreme parity of MLS, the difference between making the playoffs or not is a bounce of the ball or one bad call in a big spot. That should have no bearing on whether or not a guy is an MVP candidate.

Leave a Comment