Official 2026 MLS awards ballot, Best XI and beyond
Messi is the MVP and Cavan's the Young Player of the Year, but who else defined this 2026 season in MLS?
Before we get to my end-of-year ballot, let’s go over the three things this season was about/will be remembered for.
• Nashville set the single-season points record, and put together the best regular season in league history. They did it by getting the most from their stars, but also by their agnostic approach to player acquisition, which was rocketized by their meritocratic approach to player development. As in, it doesn’t actually matter how much we spent on you, or if you take up an international roster slot, or yadda yadda yadda. If you’re winning the job in training, then you’re going to play in the games. And if you play well in the games, then you’re going to keep playing.
This sounds like a simple thing but it’s not. Look at how few of, for example, LAFC’s academy products get chances. Look at the default deference Toronto’s veterans are given. Look at how poorly that served both teams.
I don’t want to say it’s a new model – this is what successful teams like Vancouver, Columbus, Seattle and others have done for the past half-decade – but the indisputable, all-around excellence of Nashville’s season is (should be?) impossible to ignore. And it has to inform:
- Roster building decisions.
- Player development commitment level.
- Game day XI decisions.
If it doesn’t change how your team approaches the above, your team is doing a bad job.
• The youth boom saved the season from both a watchability and a narrative point of view. Because other than Nashville, the rest of the top teams were mostly kind of disappointing, right?
- Vancouver’s been battling injuries, sold their best player in July, and weren’t quite as good as last year.
- Miami were a train wreck.
- New England went for it, and then the guy they “went for it” with immediately got hurt.
- Chicago and Dallas never actually went for it.
- LAFC and Seattle fell apart.
Into the void stepped Cavan Sullivan, Julian Hall, Adri Mehmeti, Niko Tsakiris, Neil Pierre, Justin Ellis and a few others. And these guys, it turns out, weren’t just fun prospects: they were literally some of the best players in the league, and all in aesthetically pleasing ways.
If this had been just a regular year in terms of player development, then the year overall would’ve felt… pretty bad. But because the dam burst on academy production, I think we’ll all remember 2026 as the year MLS really turned the corner on #PlayYourKids.
• Part and parcel with this is that MLS teams are becoming better at buying and/or developing wingers, which makes the 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 more viable for more than just the big spenders. You need to have dynamic wingers in order to make those formations function, and dynamic wingers are the most expensive players in the world. You basically have to spend a DP slot if you want one in MLS.
But with more guys like Sullivan and Zavier Gozo coming through the academies, or young imports like Rodolfo Aloko and Bruno Caicedo, it’s more common to have guys with high-level winger skillsets available to more than just the biggest-spending teams.
That said, the best way to ball on a budget remains the 3-4-2-1. Wingbacks and 9.5s are cheap; wingers and 8.5s aren't.
Ok, here’s my awards ballot:
