MLS: Carlos Vela, the greatest individual season in league history

Carlos Vela was named the Landon Donovan MLS Most Valuable Player this week. His 2019 season is the greatest individual campaign in league history, and it is not especially close.

Sebastian Giovinco’s 2015 season is largely considered the greatest individual season in the history of Major League Soccer, if team accolades are completely disregarded. In that season, he scored 22 goals and notched 16 assists, claiming the Landon Donovan MLS Most Valuable Player award.

His non-penalty goals and assists per 90 minutes came in at an utterly ridiculous 1.1. That means that he either scored a goal that was not a penalty or assisted a goal every 81.81 minutes. That is truly outrageous.

And yet, while Giovinco’s accomplishments should be diminished, Carlos Vela’s 2019 season has blown his statistics out of the water. After being rightly named the MLS MVP this week, it is officially safe to say, Vela had the greatest individual season in league history, and it is not especially close.

Let’s start with the simple numbers, goals and assists. Vela scored 34 goals, more than any other player in history. He then added 15 assists, good for third in the league. His 49 combined goals and assists are 11 more than Giovinco’s 2015 season.

More impressively, however, Vela also tied the record for the most non-penalty goals in a season with 25. The previous record was held by Stern John in 1998 and Mamadou Diallo in 2000. Since that time, no player has really come close to even threatening that record. But this season, Vela scored 25 non-penalty goals — in the analytics community, this is seen as an even more remarkable achievement.

Then we get to the rate that Vela provided these goal involvements. While Giovinco scored a non-penalty goal or assisted a goal every 81.81 minutes, Vela scored a non-penalty goal or assisted a goal every 68.15 minutes. To put that into context, that is a better rate than Zlatan Ibrahimovic, even if you include his six penalty goals. He scored 1.1 goals per game in 2019, the highest rate of any player in MLS history who has scored 15 or more goals in a season.

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All in all, Vela was the crucial attacking player in the best team MLS has ever seen. Los Angeles FC accrued more points than any team in league history, they posted a higher goal difference than any team in league history, and they equalled the record for goals scored with 85. Vela had a hand in 49 of them, a crazy 57.6% share of LAFC’s goals.

Vela accounted for 69.61% of the weighted MVP vote. He was the utter runaway favourite in a year that Josef Martinez set the record for consecutive games with a goal, one that is bettered by only Lionel Messi in world football, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored 30 goals in just 29 games. That tells you everything you need to know about just how brilliant Vela’s season was. In a year that saw some of the best individual campaigns MLS has ever produced, Vela was the standout MVP favourite.

Vela’s 2019 season is like nothing that has ever taken place in MLS. I would say that we will never see anything like it again, but I said the same after Giovinco’s 2015. So, for now, let’s just celebrate what was a truly remarkable individual campaign. Carlos Vela, the well-deserved league MVP.