Lionel Messi has been shortlisted for Most Valuable Player (MVP) and Newcomer of the Year in the 2023 MLS Year-End of Awards.
The 36-year-old forward has featured 11 times for Inter Miami following his move from Paris Saint-Germain in July, but just four of those appearances have come in MLS. Ten of Messi’s 11 goals since moving to Miami have come in the Leagues Cup.
Messi’s Miami teammate Sergio Busquets is also shortlisted for both awards despite joining mid-way through the season.
The criteria for the Newcomer award is a player with “previous professional experience and made his MLS debut in 2023”.
Reigning MVP Hany Mukhtar is again nominated after providing 15 goals and eight assists for Nashville in 31 MLS appearances. The Nashville attacking midfielder is among the front runners for the award alongside Luciano Acosta, who has provided 16 goals and 10 assists in 31 appearances as Cincinnati topped the Eastern Conference.
St. Louis goalkeeper Roman Burki is also on the shortlist after his side won the Western Conference. Burki is vying to become just the second goalkeeper to be named MLS MVP in the history of the awards — and the first since Kansas City’s Tony Meola in 2000.
Houston Dynamo’s box-to-box midfielder Hector Herrera is also among the front runners to be named MVP, alongside Thiago Almada, after his 11 goals and 14 assists for Atlanta.
St. Louis midfielder Eduard Lowen and Atlanta forward Giorgos Giakoumakis are expected to be among the front runners for the Newcomer award.
The awards are voted for by MLS players, coaches and media members and voting concludes on October 23.
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Does Messi have a chance of winning either award?
Analysis from U.S. soccer writer Jeff Rueter
Forget the Leagues Cup, which doesn’t factor into MLS regular season awards, and Messi’s case seems razor thin. He’s played 247 minutes, scoring once and adding two assists. In no other world does a player with that output land on the MVP shortlist, so his candidacy is a farce. Right?
Well, not exactly. First, MLS teams are required to put one or two of their players onto the shortlist for these league awards. All that’s happened with this update is that Miami has essentially named him and Sergio Busquets the two team MVPs for the 2023 season.
Second, MLS bucks convention by awarding a hyper-American “most valuable player” instead of the customary “player of the year” that most leagues have on offer. It’s picking semantics, but can we really say other players are more valuable to their teams than Messi is to Miami? That one goal came from the bench in a vital 2-0 win away at New York Red Bulls. Those assists made the difference in a 3-1 stunner at Los Angeles FC. Even more glaring has been the team’s ineptitude without him, both before he signed and since suffering the unspecified injury which has sidelined him since the September international window.
He won’t be on my five-man shortlist for the award — if you’re asking, that’s (alphabetically) Luciano Acosta, Thiago Almada, Roman Bürki, Hector Herrera and Hany Mukhtar.
But if you take Acosta off of Cincinnati and replace him with a league-average playmaking midfielder, I think Cincy is still a top-3 side in the East and challenging for the Supporters’ Shield. Replace Bürki in goal with the league’s 10th best goalkeeper, and St. Louis is probably still winning the West this season.
Without Messi, Miami is again one of the league’s worst teams. With him, they were on track to not just crash the play-in round, but possibly finish in the East’s top-seven to get automatic playoff qualification. That sounds pretty valuable to me
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MLS Newcomer of the Year Nominees
(Photo: Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images)