Nothing like a good-ol’-fashioned blitz to get you back on top. Campbell was under siege all year thanks to a fragile Houston defense, facing over five-and-a-half shots on target per game. Only Katie Atkinson and Jordyn Bloomer faced more. While the quality of those shots shook out to about average when all was said and done, Campbell stood on her head to ensure that the Dash’s defensive record looked a lot better than it deserved to. She kicked in neutral-to-decent passing and box control performances, on top of it.
It was the shotstopping that separated her from the pack, in the end. Campbell could win her second GoY statue this year, and would join the likes of AD Franch and Aubrey Kingsbury as multi-time winners.
Silkowitz and Berger would both be fair shouts; Berger’s won it before, and is probably the best keeper in the league across a large, multi-season sample. Silkowitz had a breakout campaign with Bay FC, and is firmly in the USWNT pipeline. Silkowitz was a bit worse on her passing and handling punches and parries, while Berger had a couple of dicey moments sweeping outside her box. From a descriptive, “what you did” point of view, Campbell held it down in basically all areas of the box. She’s a worthy winner.
Rest of My Ballot
-
Jane Campbell
-
Jordan Silkowitz
-
Ann-Katrin Berger
Jonas Eidevall, San Diego Wave
Coaches don’t matter as much as we think they do, and whatever success came the Wave’s way almost entirely came down to the players. This is the dumbest of all sports awards, and winning it is a Schrödinger’s box: you did and did not deserve it in equal measure.
Every team has a case. Juan Carlos Amoros has overseen a goat-to-GOAT transformation of the Gotham franchise, and the team won its first-ever Shield this year. The Utah Royals earned their first-ever playoff berth, and given the lack of superstars in the lineup, perhaps Jimmy Coenraets’s player management and motivational techniques helped get them over the line.
The Wave overperformed their preseason projections the most, both on raw points and expected points, and while the breakouts of Kimmi Ascanio, Lia Godfrey and Trinity Byars have the most to do with that, coaches can have an impact on defensive tactics, so Eidevall seems as good a choice as any. (Even there, he got lucky by having his back-four stay healthy from beginning to end, IDK)
Rest of My Ballot
-
Jonas Eidevall
-
Jimmy Coenraets
-
Juan Carlos Amoros
We’ll break down Best and 2nd XI’s at a future date, but here is the Best XI and Second Best XI according to net g+.
