2024 MLS Year-End Awards: How we voted

The MLS regular season has ended and that means it's time to vote on all the individual end-of-season awards.

Hudson River Blue once again had the privilege of casting a ballot for the year-end MLS Awards, a privilege not taken lightly, as only select members of the media are given a vote after each season. We did this for the first time in 2023, and you can look back on the official HRB votes from last season here, a post pretty similar to this one.

The 2024 ballot forced some tough decisions to be made, especially when it came to picking a Landon Donovan MLS MVP. There were tricky choices to be made elsewhere, too – is it a given to vote for the Supporters' Shield winner as Coach of the Year? Not according to this ballot it isn't. Decisions had to be made, and this post attempts to describe the decision-making process for each vote, as thoroughly as possible without overdoing it.

MLS limits voters to a designated field of nominees for each of these awards, which you can look through here. The winners of the awards will start to get announced little by little on October 28, with the league set to share confirmation of each winner here throughout awards season.

Last year, the HRB ballot's selections overlapped with the winners in six of the 10 categories listed. This ballot might not be indicative of how the voting ultimately goes (i.e., our MVP pick feels like an underdog against a certain Argentine World Cup winner), but it's what seems right after watching a season's worth of MLS and pouring over a season's worth of player statistics.

As always, if there are strong disagreements with the votes made, feel free to share those disagreements in the comments section or with us on Twitter or maybe Threads?

MVP: Cucho Hernández, Columbus Crew

This was an extremely tough call to make. Lionel Messi did top Cucho Hernández in numerous statistical categories in fewer games, but the unavoidable fact remains: Messi only played in 55% of Inter Miami's MLS matches this season.

It's harsh to penalize Messi for being injured, and his numbers would extrapolate out to a no-doubt MVP winner, had they been spread over something closer to a full 34-match slate.

Cucho and Messi were part of a crowded field worthy of and given MVP consideration. Other players like LAFC star Denis Bouanga, DC United Golden Boot winner Christian Benteke, reigning MVP Luciano Acosta of FC Cincinnati, Inter Miami co-star Luis Suárez, and Evander of Portland Timbers all had the kinds of stats that made them contenders for the season's top individual award.

Cucho earns this vote for being the most clutch and most vital to his team's 2024 regular season success of the players considered. Miami is a superteam that can rely on Messi and Suárez to each bag 20 goals while getting assisted by old Barcelona teammates like Jordi Alba.

Cucho Hernández has a deep, quality team around him in Columbus, but they wouldn't be second behind Miami in the Supporters' Shield standings without him and what he brings to the table as a striker – lots of shots to test opposing keepers, and lots of goal contributions, with Cucho's rate of 1.24 goals plus assists per 90 minutes third in MLS behind only Messi and Suárez.

The clutch nature of his activity in front of goal also counts for something. Cucho had 12 match-winning goal contributions this season, trailing only Bouanga's 13 for LAFC, so his role was essential in getting Columbus the second-most points in the league.

Messi might very likely win this award in the end and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, given his insane performance when healthy. He's passed over in favor of Cucho due to those 2024 performances being limited to 15 league starts and 19 total appearances.

Defender of the Year: Yeimar Gómez Andrade, Seattle Sounders

He’s underrated despite consistently excelling at traditional defensive defender things and is, in my opinion, the main man in the middle of the most stingy defense in MLS.

The Sounders conceded 35 goals, the fewest in the league this season, and that's due in no small part to the work of Yeimar Gómez Andrade. Yeimar makes up half of arguably the best center-back pairing in MLS with Jackson Ragen, who probably also could have warranted a vote here. Players like Adilson Malanda of Charlotte FC and Rudy Camacho and Steven Moreira of Columbus Crew also were in the conversation for this pick.

Instead, this vote goes to Yeimar – a second straight year he's been our pick for Defender of the Year – because he's consistently great at the stay-at-home defense work that helps Seattle disrupt their opponents and keep them from scoring.

2024 was the fourth straight season in which Yeimar led all MLS players in interceptions. He's also been in the Top 10 of all MLS players for clearances in four consecutive seasons, ranking eighth this season just as he did during 2023. He excels at these specific defender things year-in, year-out and deserves recognition for just how important he is to the success Seattle enjoys in front of its own goal.

Young Player of the Year: Diego Luna, Real Salt Lake

Thought was given to a vote for Obed Vargas of the Seattle Sounders, a defensive midfielder with one goal and four assists in 30 appearances while playing most of the season at the age of 18.

Luna got the nod because of how much his attacking output increased this season as his minutes and starts in MLS with Real Salt Lake also increased. Luna had eight goals and eight assists this season, leading his team in both assists and chances created. Still only 21 and in his third MLS season, this was the year Luna took a leap from a promising, unfinished young attacker to a steady presence on the wing for one of the Western Conference's better teams. He also really should have been a part of the United States men's Olympics team this summer in Paris, but that's a rant for a different article.

Newcomer of the Year: Gabriel Pec, LA Galaxy

The Galaxy finished in 13th Place in the Western Conference with 36 points from 34 games played one season ago. Adding 23-year-old Brazilian forward Gabriel Pec helped reverse their fortunes in 2024, with Gabriel Pec scoring 16 goals and adding 12 assists to bolster the Galaxy’s attack. Those numbers were good for eighth- and fifth-most in MLS, respectively, while Gabriel Pec also ranked first among all MLS players in shots on target (57), progressive carries (195), and progressive passes received (372).

It was a stellar first year in MLS for a player who’d spent the first five seasons of his career with Vasco da Gama in his native Brazil, where his best single-year goal contribution number came in 2023, when he scored eight goals and added four assists.

Goalkeeper of the Year: Kristijan Kahlina, Charlotte FC

New York City FC fans reading this aren't going to like it. Matt Freese might have been the sentimental choice here after watching him bail New York City out time after time throughout the 2024 season.

In another year, Freese might have gotten this vote, and a case could still be made for voting for him – but really, the 2024 work of Charlotte's goalkeeper was just too good to ignore.

Kristijan Kahlina played every single MLS minute this season and had the third-best save percentage among goalkeepers, made the fifth-most saves, and had the third-lowest goals against average per 90 minutes – all those ranks are courtesy of FBRef.com. We are not huge fans of using the clean sheet statistic to judge goalkeepers, but Kahlina did have the most shutouts in MLS this year, 12.

Kahlina also was the MLS keeper to most outperform his expected goals (xG) number this year, leading the league with an almost record-setting +10.5 PSxG-GA, post-shot expected goals minus goals against, if you prefer to write out the full acronym. This is considered a key metric for evaluating goalkeepers because it factors in the quality of shots a goalkeeper faced, and Kahlina was top of the league when it came to stopping the toughest of shots.

Comeback Player of the Year: Lewis Morgan, New York Red Bulls

Last year, we gave the vote in this category to Keaton Parks of New York City FC – who in 2023 was healthy for a (nearly) complete season for the first time in three years after back-to-back blood clot issues in his leg. That vote for Parks was given despite his lack of big goal or assist numbers (two goals, two assists in 2023) compared to the player who ultimately won 2023 Comeback Player of the Year, Sporting Kansas City striker Alan Pulido, who scored 16 goals in his Comeback Player season.

While Maxi Moralez was New York City’s nominee for this year’s award, he only played 17 times in MLS and didn’t make a big enough of an impact to beat out a Hudson River Derby rival, Lewis Morgan of the Red Bulls.

Morgan was his team’s leading scorer with 13 goals in 29 appearances, bouncing back from an injury-plagued 2023 season in which a hip injury limited the Scottish international to just five appearances in league play. Morgan needed surgery to address that hip problem in September 2023, but he got back to his best once recovered in 2024.

The 28-year-old forward's 18 goal involvements (13 goals, five assists) were the most he’s ever had across his five MLS seasons to date. Morgan's consistency likely helped the Red Bulls cover for the absence of their oft-injured, big-money Designated Player, Emil Forsberg, who played in just 19 league games this season.

Coach of the Year: Wilfried Nancy, Columbus Crew

Wilfried Nancy is the most irreplaceable coach in MLS and proved it again this season by pushing his Crew into position to repeat as MLS Cup winners.

Columbus did not accrue the most points this season, a distant second to Inter Miami in the race for the Supporters' Shield. Tata Martino would have been the other obvious choice for Coach of the Year, but I think Miami would win with the roster it has if there was a rotating head coach that changed with every match of the season.

That's not to belittle what Martino has accomplished this season, but Nancy and Columbus have made it look easy for long stretches of this season while navigating the unique challenges that arrive the season after you've won MLS Cup. That means fixture congestion and grueling match-filled weeks that involve travel, the juggling of multiple competitions, and the need to get every single ounce of upside out of the depth on your roster.

Nancy did that in 2024 and he remains the standard of what MLS coaches should be, someone who has molded his team into an authentic "team" that plays a certain style and can win while rotating players and dealing with adversity. Columbus has become almost unbeatable at home at Lower.com Field under Nancy, and they will once again be tough to beat for whichever other team hopes to lift MLS Cup, even the one in South Florida that just picked up the most points ever in a MLS season.