Freddie and Kasey are All Stars. ONLY Freddie and Kasey.

By: Laurie | July 13th, 2009

Click on the table to enlarge

Above are the MLS All-Star voting results, courtesy of MLSnet. As you can see, fan voting accounted for essentially squat-all.

Freddie Ljungberg and Kasey Keller made the All Star XI, as voted on by fans, coaches/GMs, players and media — each group getting 25% of the vote. Hurtado, Alonso and Montero were close but not quite.

Yes, I think we got 8 players in the top 11 in the fan vote, but the problem with this is that the fan vote is dispersed much more widely. No player got more than 7.42% of the vote. (That would be Freddie.) The average for the winners was more along the lines of 2-3%. Players, media and coaches/GMs seemed to hone in a lot more on specific players, giving the winners of these votes a higher percentage.

This happened last year for Toronto FC; they had six players as the top vote-getters in the fan vote, but precisely zero in the XI. The coach later picked Jim Brennan as one of his choices, probably to stay in their good graces, given that Toronot hosted last year. (I have a post on this topic, including the final XI, up on our main page if you want more on this.)

Of particular interest is the Montero vote, where media and coaches/GMs disagreed in a big way.

Montero
6.39% of the fan vote,
6.22 of the players vote
12.98 if the media vote, yet only
5.46 of the coach/GM vote

And the players and coaches/GMs are all huggy-kissy with Conor Casey, but the fans and media are just so-so on him. And yet he’s in and Montero’s not.

Of course, this isn’t the end. The All Star coach, Dominic Kinnear, gets five picks, and the commissioner gets two. I expect one of these to be Blanco, because he’s a DP and was close in the voting, and one to be somebody from Salt Lake, since they’re hosting. After that I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least one of Montero, Hurtado and/or Alonso. Probably Montero, unless Kinnear is still ticked about Saturday’s goal.

Or not. What do you think?

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Category: Seattle Team News

Tags: All Star game, Freddie Ljungberg, Fredy Montero, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, Kasey Keller, Osvaldo Alonso, Seattle Team News

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• steve |  July 13th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

  
  
  

  This is a dumb system for an overall fairly stupid all-star game… The starting 11 should be based purely on fan voting and the managers should be allowed to round out the back up players on the squad.

  I just think the format in general is stupid.. it should be east v. west. None of the guys who play on Everton are MLS All-Stars so the title of the game is sort of misleading.

  Hurtado, Alonso and MOntero are all huge snubs if you base it on the fan voting, and if you base it on performance. You are really gonna tell me that there are any defenders who have been as solid and consistent as Hurtado this year??? I highly doubt it. Alonso has been hurt, so this one make sense, but his play when healthy should be enough to make him an MLS MVP candidate…

  This is a shame way to choose the all star-team, a silly game and almost a relic to the old MLS days when they played with ties… either scrap this thing or make it east or west.

  Posted from United States

  

• steve |  July 13th, 2009 at 7:21 pm

  
  
  

  i meant “sham” way not shame way

  Posted from United States

  

• Laurie |  July 13th, 2009 at 7:26 pm

  
  
  

  And the oddest part about the not-East-vs-West format is that MLS is still bound by the original players union contract, so they still have to pay at leat 32 players the All Star bonus, just as if they were still doing East vs. West.

  Posted from United States

  

• rowepower |  July 13th, 2009 at 8:19 pm

  
  
  

  I sense a little jealously maybe from the other players/ coaches/ gms? You gotta admit, some of these guys must feel a little stupid/ inept that we managed to put together such a solid team in our first year…

  Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I have become used to the media bias that generally exists against west coast teams in any sport. It could just be the seattle sports fan in me talking though. I don’t really care as long as we show the league how its done in the playoffs.

  Posted from United States

  

• DaveS |  July 13th, 2009 at 8:57 pm

  
  
  

  It looks like fans probably put Freddie over the line… small favors.

  Posted from United States

  

• Laurie |  July 13th, 2009 at 9:21 pm

  
  
  

  Dave, I’m pretty sure that Freddie’s presence can be explained by the fact that the All Star roster needs to fill its quota of underwear models.

  Posted from United States

  

• rowepower |  July 13th, 2009 at 9:32 pm

  
  
  

  Haha. Touche Laurie. Too bad there’s not an all “Cosmo-girl” team that way Brad Evans and Jarrod Smith could show what they can do.

  Posted from United States

  

• steve |  July 14th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

  
  
  

  yea laurie… how about that post?

  Posted from United States

  

• DaveS |  July 14th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

  
  
  

  @Laurie… OT but worth a post:
  http://tinyurl.com/ndj42c

  Posted from United States

  

• Steve E |  July 14th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

  
  
  

  Gotta say I like this format better then baseball. 100% fan voting leads to stuffing the ballot box like we had early on in the voting. If we had 100% fan voting here it would essentially be a sounders game. We don’t have that many all-stars. Hurtado and Montero may get in as back-ups and they should. Alonso has been injured and thats why he isn’t in. I would rather see the best of the best then name/team recognition that we see in baseball’s all-star game.

  Posted from United States

  

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