Major League Soccer announced the finalists for the 2025 MLS Year-End Awards, with Inter Miami CF captain Lionel Messi named among the finalists for the Landon Donovan MLS Most Valuable Player award. He joins Denis Bouanga (LAFC), Anders Dreyer (San Diego FC), Evander (FC Cincinnati), and Sam Surridge (Nashville SC) on the shortlist. Following another remarkable regular season, Messi now has the chance to become the first player in MLS history to win back-to-back MVP awards.<\/p>\n
Messi returns to the list of finalists for the Landon Donovan MLS MVP award after claiming the award in 2024. The Argentine played a pivotal role in guiding Inter Miami CF to its best regular season in Club history, achieving the most wins, goals, and points ever and capturing the team\u2019s first Supporters\u2019 Shield while setting a new MLS single season points record with 74. Messi led the league with 36 goal contributions, including 20 goals and 16 assists, the fifth highest total in a single MLS season, and averaged an unprecedented 2.18 goal contributions per 90 minutes, the best mark in league history.<\/p>\n
Among the finalists for the different awards are individuals representing 16 MLS clubs, with the winners set to be announced throughout the Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs. The finalists for the annual awards earned the highest average votes from MLS club technical staff, MLS first-team players, and select media members, with each group accounting for 33.3 percent of the overall results.<\/p>\n
Denis Bouanga (LAFC)
\nAnders Dreyer (San Diego FC)
\nEvander (FC Cincinnati)
\nLionel Messi (Inter Miami CF)
\nSam Surridge (Nashville SC)<\/p>\n
Sigi Schmid MLS Coach of the Year<\/p>\n
Bradley Carnell (Philadelphia Union)
\nJesper S\u00f8rensen (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)
\nMikey Varas (San Diego FC)<\/p>\n
Audi Goals Drive Progress Impact Award<\/p>\n
Ryan Hollingshead (LAFC)
\nDiego Luna (Real Salt Lake)
\nBrad Stuver (Austin FC)<\/p>\n
MLS Comeback Player of the Year<\/p>\n
Lawrence Ennali (Houston Dynamo FC)
\nNick Hagglund (FC Cincinnati)
\nRichie Laryea (Toronto FC)<\/p>\n
Tristan Blackmon (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)
\nJakob Glesnes (Philadelphia Union)
\nKai Wagner (Philadelphia Union)<\/p>\n
MLS Goalkeeper of the Year<\/p>\n
Matt Freese (New York City FC)
\nDayne St. Clair (Minnesota United FC)
\nYohei Takaoka (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)<\/p>\n
Anders Dreyer (San Diego FC)
\nSon Heung-Min (LAFC)
\nPhilip Zinckernagel (Chicago Fire FC)<\/p>\n
MLS Young Player of the Year<\/p>\n
Alex Freeman (Orlando City SC)
\nDiego Luna (Real Salt Lake)
\nObed Vargas (Seattle Sounders FC)<\/p>\n
The MLS AT&T Goal of the Year (Vote Here<\/a>) and MLS Save of the Year (Vote Here<\/a>) will be decided by online voting at MLSsoccer.com<\/a>, with winners announced on Monday, Oct. 27. Voting opened on Monday, Oct. 20 and will close on Friday, Oct. 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major League Soccer announced the finalists for the 2025 MLS Year-End Awards, with Inter Miami CF captain Lionel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[6865,9523,403,99],"class_list":["post-255407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-lionel-messi","tag-mls","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}