El Guille

It's hard to put things in perspective sometimes right after championships. After teams win trophies, everything seems to have gone perfectly and judging them against past teams, players, coaches, whatever, is hard to do.

But there's one thing that is not up for debate. Guillermo Barros Schelotto is easily one of the best players in MLS and one of the most talented players ever to compete in this league. He won the regular season MVP award and the MLS Cup MVP award, just the third time that's happened and first since Carlos Ruiz did it in 2002.

Each of his assists got better in quality on Sunday. First, he did well to steal a ball on the left flank and slipped a pass perfectly to Alejandro Moreno, who took advantage of poor defending to score the first goal. Then, after helping his team make adjustments at halftime, he went near post on a corner kick and Chad Marshall buried the shot in the back of the net.

But he saved his best for last, when he somehow found Frankie Hejduk inside the box.

There were dozens of Boca Juniors shirts at HDC on Sunday, and also one other former Boca Junior legend. Former xeneize coach Carlos Bianchi was around and Guille told reporters afterward that he felt with his former boss in attendance, he could not allow his team to lose.

Guille is a superstar, a breath of fresh air. He's as classy a player as we've seen come through MLS and the league is better with him in it than not. Here's hoping we get to see more of his talents in 2009.

Barros Schelotto wins MVP

Guillermo Barros Schelotto was named the 2008 MLS Most Valuable Player as the Crew now have three individual award winners this year.

Barros Schelotto pieced together one of the finest individual campaigns in MLS history as he scored six goals and had 19 assists. Although the voting was tabulated before the season ended, Barros Schelotto is one of the main reasons why Columbus are in the MLS Cup final.

The breakdown of the voting is interesting. It was done in three parts - coaches/GMs; players; media. Schelotto had about a 2-1 edge in the coaches/GMs but the players were splite nearly evenly between Schelotto and Landon Donovan. The media, though, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Crew's superstar.

Barros Schelotto finished with 54.14 percent of the votes, Donovan behind him with 19.13 and Cuauhtemoc Blanco rounded out the field with a whopping 3.0 percent.

Here are the breakdown of the stats in percentage:

Guillermo Barros Schelotto: 53.13 coaches/GMs, 29.67 players, 79.63 media
Landon Donovan: 25.0 coaches/GMs, 26.83 players, 5.56 media
Cuauhtemoc Blanco: 0.0 coaches/GMs, 5.28 players, 3.70 media

Barros Schelotto won the MVP, Sigi Schmid won the Coach of the Year and Chad Marshall won Defender of the Year, which is a pretty good score for Columbus. Of course, an even better one for them would be a victory on Sunday.