MLS Top Performers Through Week 14 | OneFootball

Why Week 14? I say, why not? Sometimes it’s good to do things without regard to a rigorous schedule, and yesterday I felt like running some stats. All this data comes from Sofascore, which is an outstanding resource for soccer and other sports data.

Top Performers: Attack

It’s the same criteria as before: goals, penalties taken, big chances missed & goal conversion %.  What’s notable is there are twelve players sitting on six goals, many of whom were prominent in previous iterations of this article.

Top Attackers: sorted by goals scored

Defying all expectation, Tai Baribo is still on top. Even better, he’s built a small gap. Since Week 9 three players have scored four goals: Baribo, Kévin Denkey of Cincinnati and Sam Surridge of Nashville. Notably, Sam scored all four in the April 26 7 – 2 beatdown of Chicago Fire. A special shout-out goes to Martín Ojeda who got a hat-trick in a May 10, 3 – 3 draw against New England.

If Hugo Cuypers and Alonso Martínez could just up their accuracy, they could be contesting the top spot. Maybe Kevin de Bruyne could give his countryman some shooting lessons when he arrives in Chicago (though he did miss a sitter in City’s final home game last weekend).

Special: Top Goalscorer (No Penalties)

Spot-kicks pad stats. So I took a look at the top 10 scorers without this crutch.

Top Performers: Defense

The variables: tackles, accurate pass %, clean sheets, penalties committed. Only defenders and midfielders are considered.

Top Defenders, sorted by tackles

There’s a new top dog. Sergi Palencia came out of nowhere. At minimum, he had to average over 4.5 tackles per game to have made such a climb. Impressive. David Schnegg’s stock dropped from #1 to #5. He wasn’t injured, and aside from D.C. only losing two of their last five games, there is no other significant outside criteria to explain it. Sebastian Berhalter remains in the #2.

A special call-out to Yannick Bright and Edvard Tagseth, whose Accurate Pass stat exceeds 89%. Sergio Busquets is a close 88.8%.

Defenders who Score

I love this category, so I’m keeping it.

Lots of new faces in this one. It seems defenders have been punching them in the past few weeks. Alexander Freeman was on the list before; not only did he score but he also notched +3 Big Chances Missed. Debutantes: Tristan Blackmon, Anthony Markanich, Christopher McVey, Daniel Lovitz and Dagur Dan Thórhallsson.

Top Performers: Goalkeepers

What’s kinda sad is that as a team performs worse, the goalkeeper stats tend to improve. That’s because they face more action, and as more data tends to put you higher in the results. You get my drift. Kristjian Kahlina is a great example of this. In week 9 he was #3; this week he’s on top by a landslide. Charlotte FC have lost five straight in that same period. Toronto’s Sean Johnson had the biggest jump from #8 to #2 (no surprise they also won two games over this same stretch).