More than 60 college players have converged in sunny and humid Fort Lauderdale this week for the 2016 MLS Combine, all hoping to grab the eye of clubs’ technical staffs and maybe get a shot at the draft.
So since most are aiming for a shot in MLS — and because we had them all captive in one room — we decided to pick their brains for the annual anonymous Combine players’ survey.
If they’re hoping to join the league, they should have a favorite player in the league, right? We asked them to fill in their favorite MLS standouts, current or all-time, and write down more than one, if they chose.
Sure, a few superstar names came up. But as it turns out, almost all of the kids know their stuff, with some younger MLS players and even deep cuts showing up in the polls.
Hey, Tommy McNamara got just as many votes as Stevie G, Drogs, and David Villa! Chad Barrett got a couple nods!
Here are the top players they picked as favorites, in order of votes:
- First place: Sebastian Giovinco (7 votes)
- Second place:Kaká (5 votes)
- Tied for third place: Landon Donovan, Darlington Nagbe (4 votes each)
- Tied for fourth place: Didier Drogba, Ethan Finlay, Steven Gerrard, Tommy McNamara, Wil Trapp, David Villa (3 votes each)
- Tied for fifth place: Chad Barrett, Clint Dempsey, Amadou Dia, Frank Lampard, Alvas Powell (2 votes each)
Fear not if your personal favorite didn’t show up above, though. The spread of fill-in favorites was pretty wide, after all. The kids, as they say, are alright.
Here’s a full list of every MLS player who got written in as a favorite once:
David Accam
Fatai Alashe
RJ Allen
DaMarcus Beasley
Matt Besler
Nick Besler
Alex Bono
Michael Bradley
Jay Chapman
Diego Chara
Andy Craven
Giovani Dos Santos
Nick DeLeon
Dom Dwyer
Diego Fagundez
Benny Feilhaber
Perry Kitchen
Sacha Kljestan
Obafemi Martins
Dax McCarty
Eric Miller
Pedro Morales
Steve Neumann
Lee Nguyen
Marco Pappa
Andrea Pirlo
Matt Polster
Dillon Powers
Liam Ridgewell
Cristian Roldan
Tyler Rudy
Harry Shipp
Tommy Thompson
Chris Tierney
Je-Vaughn Watson
Jared Watts
Josh Wolff
Andrew Wolverton
Chris Wondolowski
