Canadian International Player of the Year 2007

[Cheeta]

(gwallace got the ball rolling and although I think I'm a bit late it's time to take up our annual cause for Voyageur International Player of the Year 2007.

Thanks, Geoff.

But you still owe me a lager yah cheap git!

****

The Voyageurs, Canada’s completely unofficial national soccer supporters group are holding their annual, and completely unofficial, International Player of the Year voting in December and would like to invite everyone interested in Canadian soccer to participate. Voting will be open on the Voyageur website until New Years Day and submissions are welcome to include a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice players.

The Voyageur’s International Player of the Year award is intended to recognize the Canadian player of 2007 who has achieved the greatest success at the club and international level for Canada over this past year.

Some simple rules and procedures.

All players who are, as stipulated in FIFA laws, eligible to play for Canada at either the youth or senior level and have done so in the past can be considered for the Voyageur's International Player of the Year.

This is an on-line poll and in order to participate voters must register with the Voyageurs. Only one user per IP (computer) address is eligible to vote in the poll. Additional submissions from the same IP address will be allowed by request at the sole discretion of the website administrators. All quires regarding this should be forwarded to such.

Voting submissions can be made on the main fan forum in the Men’s Canadian National Team and Players section under the topic, Voyageur's International Player of the Year 2007. All submissions are public.

A point system is used in calculating the value of submissions. First choice submissions receive 5 points. Second choice submissions receive 3 points. Third choice submissions receive 2 points. A player may appear only once as a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice per submission. A submission doesn’t have to include a 2nd or 3rd choice to be eligible.

The player with the highest aggregate point value will be declared the Voyageur International Player of the Year 2007.

Members of both genders are eligible for The Voyageur's International Player of the Year award.

Polling is open until New Years Day 2008 (local time).

[Cheeta]

This is still a process which is evolving on the site but I'd like to ask the question;

Do we (ie the Vs) wish to give the media who wish to participate in this poll greater voting weight than Average Joe Punter? Do we want to keep this strictly a fan award or do we want to try to broaden it's "so-called" legitimacy by giving football media types a disproportionate voting advantage? (say 5 to 1 for arguments sake. 25 points for a 1st place media vote, 15 for a 2nd, that sort of thing)

As usual, feel free to offer your opinions on this question along with your votes.

For those who don't know ATIBA HUTCHINSON was the Voyageur's International Player of the Year for 2006. Followed by Kevin McKenna and Dwayne de Rosario in 2nd, and a painfully close 3rd respectfully.

[Cheeta]

And to get the ball rolling, I cast my ballot as....

1st Place; Julian de Guzman.

For no other reason than his Gold Cup performance and the fact he's a regular fixture in a top flight side in the 2nd best league in the world.

2nd Place; Dwayne de Rosario.

Second choice by a hair. Club and international play impossible to ignore. When is Dee-Row going to get over the hump and be my 1st Choice Player? 2008?

3rd Place; Pat Onstad.

The revival of The Old Man of Canadian football needs to be recognized. MLS is his playground but his international performances of 2007 stunned everyone. The Rock of Gibraltar has nothing over Fury alumni, Pat "Just gettin' it done" Onstad.

Honourable mention;

Christine Sinclair.

Oh-my-Gawd. If she'd had some club play in '07 she'd have made top 3 I'm sure.

Robert Friend.

He's an animal. He belongs in a cage.

[loyola]

1st: Dwayne DeRosario

2nd: Julian DeGuzman

3rd: Pat Onstad

Honorable mention: Rob Friend and Richard Hastings

I thought we had a youth award in the past...I will cast my vote later for this one if we have one.

[Grizzly]

1st: Julian DeGuzman (Gold Cup performance and the fact he's a regular fixture in a admitedly relegation endangered top flight side in the best league in the world - take that Cheetah).

2nd: Lars Hirschfeld - made a convincing return to the national team and has been impressive for his club side especially in Champion's League

3rd: Dwayne DeRosario - I thought he was a Yallop boy but he only started playing up to his international potential once Yallop left. Continues to do well in club competition and is starting to bring the same level of play to the national team as well.

Wanted to include Friend but DeRo was better internationally. If Friend can score some goals for us he will quickly move up the list. Hutchinson had a good Gold Cup but has been a bit disappointing since and his club career hasn't progressed as fast as I thought it would this year. Onstad was the surprise but I didn't think this was enough to get into the top three.

Another category: most disappointing

1) the Women's team

2) Jamie Peters

3) Greg Sutton

4) Marco Reda

5) Adam Braz

[RS]

1st - Dwayne De Rosario

Has come into his own at both the international and club level. Canada's worst game of the year was not coincidentally the one he missed. MVP of MLS Cup again. Also finished fourth in Lou Marsh Award voting, behind Canadian superstars Sidney Crosby and Steve Nash.

2nd - Julian De Guzman

Gold Cup MVP, and de facto leader of Canada's national team. Could very easily have been my top pick.

3rd - Pat Onstad

The wily old vet seems to be getting better at an age when most are either retired or in serious decline. A solid performer at both the club and international level, Pat stepped in admirably at the Gold Cup and didn't miss a beat.

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Does the winner actually receive some sort of physical award?

[Toronto MB]

It would be great if we organised a formal award with nominees and really tried to promote it. Similar to the Voyageurs Cup a few years ago. I'm sure some of the soccer specialty programming looking for Canadian content could be talked into presenting it, we have some connections.

Have an award that came split from fan based web-voting and votes from a panel of soccer media.

It would take some organisation.

Just a thought, but my pick would be:

1) Julian DeGuzman

- Gold Cup MVP

- Strong play at DePortivo

- Best overall performer for the MNT

2) Dwayne DeRosario

- Scores of highlight goals

- MLS Cup Winner and GWG

- Excellent in GC/Costa Rica

Iain Hume was top scorer at Leicester, a strong achievement.

Rob Friend leading the B2 on and off.

Brennan for a confident year as TFC captain and few but good performances for Canada.

[CanadasBest]

Agreed with Toronto MB about promoting this.

1) Julian deGuzman

2) De Rosario

3) Martin Nash

[CanadasBest]

quote:

Another category: most disappointing

1) the Women's team

2) Jamie Peters

3) Greg Sutton

4) Marco Reda

5) Adam Braz

1) The CSA

2) Benito (The Bandito) Archundia

3) Dale Mitchell

[Grizzly]

quote:Originally posted by Grizzly

Another category: most disappointing

1) the Women's team

2) Jamie Peters

3) Greg Sutton

4) Marco Reda

5) Adam Braz

Actually I should add the whole U-20 team to that list maybe at number 2 behind the Women's team who I expected a bit more from. The U-20's performed below my expectations also but on the other hand it wasn't a complete surprise that they were poor either.

[Lomonty]

Julian DeGuzman- All respect to DeRo but Julian is on another level

Dewayne Derosario- "Human highlight reel"

Atiba Hutchinson- Will move to a big 4 league in the next year

Women

Kara Lang just cause she's amazing in so many ways

[Tyson M]

1st- Julian DeGuzman - Awesome for us and a good player in a great league!

2nd- Lars Hirshfield - Decent Champions league run and can't fault him for the goals he's let in for Canada.

3rd- Dwayne DeRosario - Dangerous for Canada and one of the best players in his league.

honorable mention... Rob Friend(didn't show up for Gold Cup!), Onstad(because he showed up BIG TIME) and Iain Hume(scores for club and is fun to watch).

[VPjr]

#1 - Julian De Guzman - enough has been already written about why he deserves the award.

#2 - De Ro - He had a so-so MLS regular season but he's a fantastic big game player, scored the winner for Dynamo in MLS Cup and scored the best goal of any Team Canada player in 2007 with that rocket against Costa Rica at BMO

#3 - Rob Friend - He's had an outstanding 1st half of the season in BL2

As for MB Toronto's idea of getting the media involved, I like the idea.

If people like it, I would have no problem sending an email to my contact list asking them to submit their top 3 choices. I am sure that more than a few would gladly do so.

Honourable Mention:

Jonathan De Guzman - He's actually been the best Canadian player in the world in 2007 (in my opinion) but he doesn't qualify for the award as he has not suited up for Canada in the past.

[Ivan]

1. Julian DeGuzman

2. Dwayne DeRosario

3. Lars Hirschfeld

[Gian-Luca]

1. Julian

2. DeRo

3. Friend

[Toronto MB]

I think we should hold off on contacting our various media contatcts until we decide on how we are organising it.

We should have a well presented document to present to them if we want it to be taken seriously.

If we all agree on the concept of splitting a web-vote with a media vote, than do some of the more web savvy V's have an idea of the best way to organise that. Can we do it on the site, or do we need to use an external voting site. It would be better if we could keep it all tied to canadian-soccer.com

I think it's also important to organise a list of 4-6 nominees.

I would be happy to take some of the initiative in drafting the document, but want to take note of a wider group's thoughts on it as well.

feel free to e-mail me as well as posting here:

themaxbell@hotmail.com

[LUFC]

1. Julian De Guzman

2. Dwayne De Rosario

3. Pat Onstad

[JamesW]

I think this should stay as a fan award. We are a fan site, its our award. Why should we give the media a larger voice than ours? Would that not defeat the whole purpose of this site?

1. Dwayne De Rosario

2. Julian De Guzman

3. Rob Friend

[Cheeta]

Jump in for a moment.

Physical award.

YES! For a variety of reasons I unintentionally screwed that up last year but won't make the same mistake twice. An award will be sent out (not sure what yet, the embroidered cap idea while tricky is doable).

Media announcement.

YES! And unlike last year I think there are a few allies on the Vs forum now who're way more qualified and will be more effective in moving the word out than I was last year with my e-mail campain. Those e-mails weren't without results though as this poll did get some print and face time (Fox Soccer Report stands out in my memory).

Media Vote.

Personally I'd like to keep it a fan award. The CSA does something similar but staggers the voting between fan ballots, media ballots and accredited coaches if I remember rightly. I only float the added value for media types scheme as a sort of "carrot" to the media types. An insentive to help promote, or at least participate in the poll. You'll note I'm only suggesting an inflated value for media members who wish to participate. If 5 do, great. If 50 do, better. We're a small forum at a quiet time of the year and every little bit helps. Last year we had around 60 voters and I thought that was fantastic. This year 100 would be nice.

Looking like a two horse race already.

[JamesW]

Just a question, did we change the name of this award to "Internation Player of the Year" or am I missing something?

[The Beaver]

1. DeRosario, Dwayne

2. DeGuzman, Julian

3. DeFriend, Rob

[BearcatSA]

1. DeGuzman

2. DeRosario

3. Onstad

(Honourable mention: Hirschfeld, Friend)

For what they're worth, here are some other categories:

Comeback player of the year:

1. Onstad

2. Hastings

(Honourable mention: Nash, though I think the MNT comeback is over)

Breakthrough player of the year:

1. Friend

2. Hainault

3. Nakajima-Farran

I'll leave my sarcastic categories for another thread;)

[CanadasBest]

quote:Originally posted by Jamit

Just a question, did we change the name of this award to "Internation Player of the Year" or am I missing something?

That's why I still haven't bought Cheeta that lager.

[The Ref]

1. Dwayne DeRosario

2. Pat Onstad

3. Paul Stalteri

[Alex]

1. Julian deGuzman - Everytime I remind myself he plays for us, I get chills

2. Dwayne Derosario - That goal at BMO gave me chills

3. Pat Onstad - I no longer get the chills when I think of him being called the #1 (if Lars is accidently injured)