Nielsen Named Goalkeeper of the Year

After the Best XI were announced on Monday, this award was pretty much a given, but today, Jimmy Nielsen was named MLS' Goalkeeper of the Year in a landslide victory.  The player being touted as his biggest Michael Gspurning finished a distant third, much to the surprise I'm sure of Sigi Schmid who was calling for him to be named the goalkeeper of the year earlier this year.  In fact even runner up, Dan Kennedy finished far behind Nielsen in the voting.  Nielsen finished with 49.12% of the vote from clubs, Kennedy and Gspurning both finished with 12.28 percent of the vote.  In the media vote it was even further, Nielsen finished with 70.77% of the vote while second place Kennedy had 3.08% and Gspurning finished with 4.61%.  Fifth place Andy Gruenebaum was the closest of the top 5 with 9.23%.  In player vote Nielsen again won easily getting 26.44% of the vote compared to Kennedy's 14.94% and Gspurning's 11.49%.

That brings KC's awards total to 6 with Nielsen's goalkeeper of the year joining Matt Besler's defender of the year, and Nielsen and Besler being named to the Best XI with Aurelien Collin and Graham Zusi.  KC also had Kei Kamara finish runner up in Humanitarian of the Year and Peter Vermes finishing runner up on the Coach of the Year ballot.  The last award for KC is Zusi up against Chris Wondolowski and Thierry Henry for MVP.