Carlos Vela is the 2019 Major League Soccer Most Valuable Player, the league announced Monday.
The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Baxter first reported the impending announcement over the weekend.
In his second season with Los Angeles FC, Vela helped the club win the Supporters’ Shield and break MLS records for points and goal differential by doing some record breaking of his own. He claimed the golden boot with 34 goals — breaking Josef Martínez’s year-old single-season record — and contributed 15 assists, tied for third-most in MLS during the regular season.
Vela, 30, is the first Mexican player to win the Landon Donovan MVP award. His other accolades this season include a place in the MLS Best XI and captaining the 2019 MLS All-Star team against Atletico Madrid in Orlando, Fla.
Players, club technical staffs, and select media vote for the league MVP each year. Vela took 69.6 percent of the final vote. The tally was even more lopsided among his peers. MLS players named Vela as MVP on 80.3 percent of their ballots.
Zlatan Ibrahimović, Vela’s outspoken crosstown rival with the Los Angeles Galaxy — who repeatedly said this year that he was better than Vela — garnered 14.1 percent of the final vote after finishing the regular season with 30 goals.
Martínez, last year’s MVP who scored 27 times this regular season for Atlanta United, took 7 percent of the vote and finished third.