The best player for each birth year in MLS Next Pro
MLS Next Pro does not have an age limit. It has always been a controversial issue since its inception, with people divided between those who want to give young players an opportunity to shine instead of being benched by older more ready guys with less potential, and those who want to give them an opportunity to grow in a competitive environment, in a real professional league and not a youth tournament.
Both stances have their own merit, but in my honest opinion, I espouse the idea of challenging these talents in a real professional league, having to earn their spot against seasoned pros who might live being employed by an MLS team as their one and last chance of improving their careers and earnings, or might see it as an opportunity to be a good mentor while eyeing a potential future career in the technical staff.
Sure, there will be some franchises who will completely fail in finding the right balance, skewing too much towards the side of experience — Huntsville — or the side of youth — Real Monarchs — but I think that those that manage to do so bring more to the table than what you lose by not enforcing such balance on bad teams with age restrictions.
Recently, Ternana head coach and former Serie A striker Cristiano Lucarelli heavily criticized the rules of Serie D, the fourth tier of Italian soccer, which has rules that force teams to play at least four players under a certain age with the hope of “fostering development and giving more chances to young players”. As Lucarelli said, most of those teams use these slots on players at the fullback and winger positions, and he ironically commented that, given the prevalence of slots used in those positions, Italy in recent years should’ve produced “thousands of Paolo Maldinis and thousands of Maicons”.
While Lucarelli is, like most Italian managers, a noisy personality bordering on the controversial, I do think that his criticism is on point. Forcing teams to go young when they don’t want to do so doesn’t really improve them, so maybe it’d be better to let them do things the way they want, and use the experience of their players as a testing ground for those younger players that earn their chances. It decreases quantity, but it should lead to better quality.
It must also be said that, while not having an actual age limit, MLS Next Pro teams generally don’t really invest in players over 24 years old, at least not as their go-to players in critical situations. It might be anecdotal evidence, but if I were to make a list of the top 100 players in the league, all of them would be at the oldest in the age range of a senior in college coming into the league from the SuperDraft.
And it’s not like there isn’t any merit in trying and develop those slightly older players, or that over a certain age players don’t develop anymore. As sport all around the world seems to be in a general period of youth-ification and late bloomers appear to be generally more and more out of fashion — the debate about who gets to be called “young” in cycling is a testament to that — we must constantly remind ourselves that while the age 16–18 might be crucial in player development, players don’t just stop being able to improve after that. Also: MLS is, yes, a selling league, but teams are also in the business of winning. They don’t just have to develop potential multi-million dollar transfer fee, but also serviceable depth options that are necessary if you want to make a championship run in a league with a season as long and grueling as MLS.
This is why, when I decided to make this experiment, and finding the best player for each year of birth in MLS Next Pro, I included some of the “older” guys — quotation necessary also because I am the same age as the oldest guy in this list — because, well, there’s a lot of them and they still have enough margins of growth, potentially, to conduct a solid MLS career as league veterans for a decade or so, and that profile of player too is something MLS teams would want to get a hand on early, as they can cost some (Allocation) money in the trade market.
1999: Yosuke Hanya — Colorado Rapids
23 games, 13 goals, 8 assists
You can’t not have someone from the current best team in the league in such a list. Especially when there is such a clear candidate for MVP far and above all his other teammates. Hanya has been a tornado on this league, and his growth has apparently come out of thin air. Nobody ever expected such a return from him. In his entire college career at UMass, Hanya was a good passing-first number 10, but totaled two goals over his three seasons as a Minuteman. This year alone he has scored 13, after not scoring at all in his first MLS Next Pro season with the Rapids II. I don’t think I remember someone just appearing as a completely new player in the span of a season at age 23. It’s not just that his production improved, it’s that he looks like a whole new player. The run above was never a run he had in his catalogue, nor he ever showed this kind of mindset needed to put yourself into scoring positions. The goals added metric by American Soccer Analysis still doesn’t really love him — 1.23 g+, but only 0.05 from shooting — but the growth over a single season has been impressive even there, after a relatively mediocre if not flat out bad first year — a total of -0.29 g+, with -0.61 from shooting.
Honorable mentions: Nick Firmino (Atlanta), Levonte Johnson (Vancouver), John Klein (St. Louis)
2000: Jack Lynn — Orlando City
25 games, 18 goals
He scored a lot in 2022, and he repeated himself in 2023. Jack Lynn has been a known commodity at this level — which arguably no other player in this list can claim to be — and at this point he’ll have to wonder what his next step will be because, especially considering his age, he has not only earned a next chapter, but might be willing to move oceans and mountains to actually get it. With the sale of Ercan Kara to Turkey, there might be a lane towards first team minutes for Lynn, even if technically there’s already a backup striker to McGuire in Ramiro Enrique. He’s a very quick striker, with good technical ability and really dangerous against a high line running in behind. I see some USL Championship teams potentially being really interested in this kind of profile, and there’s a non-zero chance that he might become star striker at that level.
Honorable mentions: Kemy Amiche (Huntsville), O’Vonte Mullings (Red Bulls), Patrick Agyemang (Crown Legacy)
2001: MD Myers — New York City FC
26 games, 18 goals, 5 assists
A sign of the decreasing importance that the SuperDraft has for MLS teams, more than the shrinking number of first team players coming out of it, is that most of the franchises look like they’re really bad at scouting the college games, with very few exceptions. It’s not unheard in this league for the best player of the draft coming out of the later picks and rounds, and it’s frankly ludicrous sometimes just how good talents just slip through the cracks. 65 players were picked before MD Myers after the striker had one of the best seasons in college soccer — 13 goals and 7 assists in 21 games — and the wildest thing might be that he isn’t even the most notable late pick — Andrew Privett, now a starter in MLS, went at #69. Of course, the context a player is thrown in makes the difference between success and failures, but we’ve seen the numbers that Myers put up in a good conference, and it should not be surprising that it translated this quickly at MLSNP level. He’s tied for top in the goalscoring charts, and with NYCFC sending Segal on loan, there’s now a hole as backup striker in the first team. Before using CFG’s scouting network, they would be wise to use what they have in their own hands first.
Honorable mentions: AJ Marcucci (Red Bulls), Jordan Adebayo-Smith (New England), Jeremy Rafanello (Philadelphia)
2002: David Poreba — Crown Legacy
26 games, 6 goals, 5 assists
For a team that has been at the top of the standings for the entire season and that is only behind Colorado on goal differential, Crown Legacy doesn’t really seem to have a leading MVP candidate. They’ve worked very much as a cooperative, with so many great players for this league alternating as the driving force of the team. The depth is unmatched and it might be tough to equal even in further seasons. But to tie all this together, a great captain is crucial. David Poreba has been that leader and has been easily the best “traditional” midfielder in the entire league. Very few can match is total goals output starting from that far back in the central zones of the pitch, and he has taken a passion for doing big things in big moments. If it will be Crown Legacy winning the whole thing, it could be argued that there’s no one as deserving of being the first to raise the trophy than him.
Honorable mentions: Damian Rivera (New England), Joshua Bolma (New England), Javier Otero (Orlando)
2003: Alenis Vargas — Sporting Kansas City
21 games, 6 goals, 7 assists
The Honduran attacker is must watch tv. He’s a very dribbly boi and he has a good taste in bangers. It’s not that he lights up in matches, is that before every exciting play of his there’s almost like a light exploding from the ball, like that round sphere could understand that it’s going to live through a very fun rollercoaster. In his first season in the league, he has amassed some very impressive numbers and really cemented the idea that MLS Next Pro is a perfect landing spot exactly for this type of prospects, guys who a team might want to take a flyer on but might not be ready for MLS action. Test them out and see what they got, but then, if they perform well, exposure to the first team should come relatively quickly, at least to prove that your commitment to the player is serious.
Honorable mentions: Keesean Ferdinand (Portland), Omari Glasgow (Chicago), Harold Osorio (Chicago)
2004: Ibrahim Kasule — New York Red Bulls
24 games, 15 goals, 6 assists
This next paragraph is going to be my official case for his candidacy as MLS Next Pro’s 2023 MVP: he’s the league leader in goals+assists. He has two stretches of six games in which he scored at least one goal in each game, no one has more than one of them. He has two Player of the Month awards and once again, no one has more than one. He’s also, incidentally, the youngest player to have earned this award. He is immaculate from the spot. He’s a number 10/8, but he attacks the box and presses with the urgency and the instincts of a pure striker, he can create but also chase goals like a bird of prey, he has a soft touch and a powerful shot. In the ocean of disappointment that is the Red Bulls’ first team, he could bring a spark, even if he turned out to be just the next guy in the Red Bull chain leaving for Leipzig or Salzburg before fans’ hopes. He was surely worth the little bit of drama that surrounded his signing — he looked destined to go to Turkey for a bit, but I never fully understood what actually happened.
Honorable mentions: Efrain Morales (Atlanta), Antonio Carrera (North Texas), Aaron Bibout (Galaxy)
2005: Mataeo Bunbury — Columbus Crew
16 games, 4 goals, 3 assists
The son of Canadian soccer legend Alex and brother of MLS veteran Teal has had quite a whirlwind of experiences in his young career. Partially because of his dad’s Portuguese connections — he played for Sporting from age 11 to age 15 — then because his father’s post-playing career had led the family to Mataeo’s native Minnesota, where he first played in a local team and then got caught in the disastrous mishandling of Minnesota United’s academy, he has played for a lot of teams. After ending up in Kansas City, he left that because of disagreements over his development and took the road of a USL contract. But he’s now on loan from Birmingham to the MLSNP’s inaugural champions, and it’s hard to imagine the Crew won’t want to make the deal permanent. He’s a quick winger who I see having more of an impact as a striker, both a second or primary option, with great tenacity, good at pressing, a good shooting technique and a score-first mindset that encourages his managers about playing him closer to the box and the goal.
Honorable mentions: Klevis Haxhari (New York City), Mihail Gherasimencov (Vancouver), Francis Westfield (Philadelphia)
2006: CJ Olney — Philadelphia Union
21 games, 4 goals, 9 assists
If you went to check the stat leaders in MLS Next Pro, you’d notice that among the top 5 in goals and assists there are only two players who were eligible for the most recent U20 World Cup. One of them has already been discussed and is Ibrahim Kasule of the Red Bulls. The other not only is eligible for the U20 World Cup, but is also eligible — and could be reasonably expected to play — in the upcoming U17 World Cup. Christopher Olney Jr. has truly taken a huge step forward this season and it’s been reported that Philadelphia would really gladly make him their next homegrown signing, although he apparently has refused their contract offers. I can’t tell you to trust those reports, but I can’t really tell you to not trust them either, we are all in the same boat until official developments will arrive, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the franchise was really eager to sign him, because he’s a really creative player with great soccer IQ. This year in MLS Next Pro he has played mostly as a left winger, but we do know that Jim Curtin doesn’t really make use of them. Could he potentially aspire to be a Gazdag replacement. Judging by the above clip, he seems to have the same instincts of the box-crashing Hungarian.
Honorable mentions: Stuart Hawkins (Seattle), Tyler Hall (Inter Miami), Taha Habroune (Columbus)
2007: Peyton Miller — New England Revolution
21 games, 3 goals, 3 assists
Miller’s growth over this season has been truly impressive. He started out as a player from the academy, but quickly progressed to untouchable MLS Next Pro starter, perennial US U17 callup and MLS homegrown really in a matter of months. Even being in the conversation for best 2007-born in the league is a massive achievement because there are plenty of names — some of whom performed really well over the season — who begun 2023 with higher expectations than him. His trajectory is telling of just how inscrutable is development at this step in a player’s career. He and New England are still apparently undecided over whether he’s a left winger or left back, but I think this is just normal occurrence for most fullbacks prospect of that age that stuck out: they’re so good teams want to see whether maybe they could project at winger too, but I’m confident that his career in the professional game will come from starting further back.
Honorable mentions: Caden Glover (St. Louis City), Santiago Morales (Inter Miami), Luis Rivera (Real Monarchs)
2008: Maximo Carrizo — New York City FC
16 games
It is really easy to make choices for this specific age group, the youngest to have featured this year in MLS Next Pro: only four players have amassed more than a game worth of minutes — actually, only these four have earned more than a half worth of minutes — and one player has played more minutes than all the three honorable mentions combined. At this age, really the best you can hope for a prospect, even if it’s a heavily regarded one like Maximo Carrizo, is to hang on at the level and not look out of their depth, and the NYCFC homegrown has done so, even earning some good highlights showing just how older he is compared to his peers in terms of understanding of the game and reading the plays. The hype is real, but it deserves patience.
Honorable mentions: Julian Hall (New York Red Bulls), Nimfasha Berchimas (Crown Legacy), William Mackay (Real Monarchs)
