National Soccer Hall of Fame: Where my votes went, and why

Recognition of Major League Soccer's early days drove a big part of my balloting as a member of the Player Selection Committee

Once a year the National Soccer Hall of Fame’s player selection committee gets on a nationwide call to discuss procedure and exchange thoughts on balloting for the next class of inductees. It’s always a proud moment personally, sharing balloting duties with former U.S. national team giants, MLS GMs, influential writers and broadcasters and others. Like most of the members, I take the responsibility seriously, so the call serves a real purpose.

Everyone is provided an opportunity to speak on behalf of one of the men or women who have advanced through the balloting process. It’s super helpful because we can’t all be experts across the board on all elements of the professional game. Plus, as human beings, we all have blind spots. So if we keep our ears and minds open, hearing well-crafted thoughts from someone else can be meaningful.

The National Soccer Hall of Fame, attached to Toyota Stadium in suburban Dallas

It happened that way for me three years ago as Abby Wambach spoke passionately about some of the women whose U.S. national team accomplishments may have been marginalized because, at the time, women’s soccer just didn’t move the media needle as forcefully. I sort of understood that I couldn’t always vote on “current day” criteria; rather, I needed to sort of “backfill” in my personal balloting process, adding more weight to some of the women who may not have previously gotten the votes they truly deserved through the years.

I wrote more about that here.

This year, along vaguely similar lines, I spoke on behalf of four potential Class of 2025 inductees who were stars and personnel cornerstones of the earlier MLS days. (The complete list of finalists for the 2025 class is here.)

It’s a little too easy to reduce these guys’ impact, these high-level performers who stood out in Major League Soccer’s first 12-15 years (roughly from the inaugural 1996 season until 2010). While it’s absolutely true that MLS didn’t have the same top-to-bottom quality it has now, nor the broader acclaim nor national footprint of today, that shouldn’t wipe away this group’s accomplishments. As such, I cast votes for Kyle Beckerman, Dwayne De Rosario, Shalrie Joseph and Nick Rimando (along with six others; see the entire list below).

I also cast a vote for Chris Wondolowski, certainly an MLS giant, but slightly more “latter day,” less of an early MLS fellow.

MLS is in a pretty good place today. Well, not to be Capt. Obvious here, but MLS today isn’t here without the MLS of yesterday. So … no Leo Messi in Miami. No rivalries between two clubs in New York and two more in Los Angeles. No amazing, shiny new stadiums in Columbus, Cincinnati, Austin, and elsewhere. No huge broadcast deal with Apple TV to bring the league to screens around the world. On it goes.

Real Salt Lake’s Nick Rimando, Major League Soccer’s all-time leader in games played, wins, saves and shutouts

The point here is that guys like Beckerman, De Rosario, Joseph and Rimando were the dominant, driving personnel forces of the times, all of them over a generous chunk of years, through the 2000s and beyond. You could maybe add Chad Marshall, who was also on the ballot, although he came along a little bit later and didn’t really have a significant international resume.

Even if none of the foursome that got my vote were giants internationally, I hoped to point out the the critical roles they served in pushing the professional game’s development here, and do whatever I could to see that their accomplishments weren’t minimized by their time frame.

Here are my ten votes (each voter gets up to 10). The class of 2025 will be announced at some point in the future, with the induction ceremony scheduled for May of 2025 at the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Frisco, Texas.

• Kyle Beckerman

• Lori Chalupny

• Dwayne De Rosario

• Keith Johnson

• Shalrie Joseph

• Carli Lloyd (pictured)

• Nick Rimando

• Amy Rodriguez

• Cat Whitehill

• Chris Wondolowski