Five USA Stalwarts Elected To Hall (Updated With Vote Totals)
Cobi Jones, Eddie Pope, Earnie Stewart, Bruce Murray and Bob Gansler, all stalwarts of the US Men’s National Team, have been elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame’s Class of 2011, it was announced today.
Jones, Pope and Stewart earned election through the Player Ballot, while Murray was the Veterans choice and Gansler is in through the Builders ballot.
Jones – in his first year on the ballot – won 87 percent of the vote, the highest since Mia Hamm was named on 97 percent of the ballots four years ago. Pope was also a first-time eligible and claimed 74 percent of the vote, while Stewart got in on his fourth try with 71 percent after a 58 percent approval rating a year ago.
I voted for Bruce Murray for as long as he was on the regular ballot (the Veterans and Builders categories are separate elections in which I don’t take part) and am glad to see the former Team USA captain get in. Ditto for Gansler, who coached the Mullet Brigade to Italia ’90.
What’s also interesting is Jason Kreis who retired as MLS’ all-time leading goalscorer and will have his number nine retired by Real Salt Lake this year, didn’t garner enough votes. We don’t know how close Kreis – or any of the others – came, because USSF didn’t release vote totals – not even the top ten. Hopefully they’ll rectify that oversight. Just as soon as Dave Checketts launches the investigation into why Kreis didn’t make it unanimously. (Hey, I voted for him, you can’t blame me.)
EDIT: The biggest surprise (to me, anyway) in the vote totals was that Jason Kreis only got 16% of the vote, less than Steve Trittschuh.
| Cobi Jones | 87.13% |
| Eddie Pope | 74.26% |
| Earnie Stewart | 71.29% |
| Marco Etcheverry | 56.44% |
| Shannon MacMillan | 54.46% |
| Joe-Max Moore | 51.49% |
| Cindy Parlow | 43.56% |
| Carlos Valderrama | 42.57% |
| Peter Vermes | 38.61% |
| Chris Armas | 32.67% |
| Tisha Venturini Hoch | 23.76% |
| Robin Fraser | 20.79% |
| Mauricio Cienfuegos | 18.81% |
| Roy Lassiter | 17.82% |
| Chris Henderson | 17.82% |
| Peter Nowak | 17.82% |
| Mike Burns | 17.82% |
| Steve Trittschuh | 17.82% |
| Victor Nogueria | 16.83% |
| Jason Kreis | 15.84% |
| Raul Diaz Arce | 10.89% |
| Tiffany Roberts | 8.91% |
| John O’Brien | 8.91% |
| Danielle Slaton | 2.97% |
| Carlos Llamosa | 2.97% |
I don’t know if that was just a crowded ballot and you’re in your first year type of deal or if Kreis rubbed some voters the wrong way or what. Something must have happened for a guy who retired as MLS’ all-time leading goal scorer (and is still fourth) to get that little support.
Tags: soccer, soccer Hall of Fame, US soccer
March 29th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
There is obviously an anti-indoor bias at the USSHoF. Preki made the ballot before Tatu, Noguria, Toth, Zungul and Jago.
What will it take to change the minds of the voters that indoor soccer was important in the 80′s and 90′s, and without the MISL, there would be no MLS?
March 29th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
The Hall of Fame voting has really become, with a few exceptions, more about what you have done with the National Teams, something the other major Halls don’t really contend with. And now that USSF is the caretaker, it is not completely independent anymore. To be honest, if I were MLS I would consider starting some kind of league honor system to compensate, even if its entirely for the promotional benefit of having another media event.
March 29th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Alan, I touched on that in my entry about my ballot. The powers that be (or were, more precisely) at the hall discussed indoor, but there was never enough momentum to get anything done.
They could do a special indoor election (like the all-NASL election of several years ago), but I don’t think there’s any real chance of that. Now that there’s no real centralized, independent Hall structure, the chances of debate on it are even slimmer (especially since none of the current indoor leagues are actually affiliated with USSF).
The nascent Indoor Soccer Hall of Fame may be all we get.
And, Gerald, as closely tied as Garber is to USSF, I would not expect MLS to go on its own in a pseudo-Hall. Interestingly enough, though, as you know, USL has its own hall of fame.
March 30th, 2011 at 6:40 am
Well, like I’ve been saying for years. If the NSHOF doesn’t decide that MLS careers – by themselves – make players worthy of inclusion, then MLS will eventually create it’s own soccer hall of fame, and once that hall starts honoring (pre-MLS) oldtimers and women’s players, the current NSHOF will come a footnote in history.
March 30th, 2011 at 7:58 am
Someone still has to pay for it. And it’s not the NSHOF deciding it, it’s the voters. You gonna change out all the voters? As if there’s some huge untapped market of knowledgeable soccer people out there who aren’t currently voting?
It’s not as if MLS can create a Hall of Fame and NOT have it beset by the exact same problems that befell the current/original Hall. You still have to have a building, you still have to have a staff, you still have to depend on people actually visiting it, and all of those things cost money and none of them are guaranteed to actually happen.
And for what? So that Jason Kreis can get in on the first ballot? Who are you going to get who’s going to vote for him in greater numbers than this collection of people did? Or are you just going to have MLS declare Hall of Famers by fiat? Like you reach some certain level of accomplishment, a la the LPGA, and you’re automatically in?
You can’t separate club and national team performance – you are leaving out part of a player’s career. If voters choose to take into account that Kreis fell below the Ralston Line, that’s up to them. You can’t just ignore that facet of his career.
An MLS-only Hall of Fame would be the equivalent of starting your own club because you don’t like who got elected president of the one you were in.
And, again, given how tightly USSF and MLS are intertwined, don’t look for it anytime soon.
March 30th, 2011 at 1:08 pm
This is the shocking part:
Roy Lassiter 17.82%
Chris Henderson 17.82%
Peter Nowak 17.82%
Mike Burns 17.82%
Steve Trittschuh 17.82%
These schlubs got as many votes as a player of Nowak’s caliber.
Obviously, the behind the doors Tomasch campaign succeeded in preventing one of the greatest players in MLS history to be voted into the HoF again.
March 30th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
That or yours is the minority opinion.
It appears as though US National Team performance factors largely into this, which sucks for foreign players who starred in our domestic league.
April 8th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Kenn makes an extremely important point here, which a lot of people don’t seem to understand. The Hall of Fame (or now, the people at the USSF who are administering it), don’t decide who gets into the Hall. All they do send out the ballots, count the votes and announce the results.
As for an anti-indoor bias, this is no big secret and never has been. It says right in the eligibility criteria that you have to have either 20 caps or five seasons in a first-division U.S. outdoor league to be on the ballot.
April 8th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
And I can’t honestly imagine who you’d replace the current voter pool with, can you?
My man Jack Huckel told me indoor has come up and there were discussions, but there wasn’t enough push to really make anything happen.
Which is really unfortunate when you think of it. Yes, indoor is a shell of its former self now and it’s a marginal part of American soccer NOW, but it was a really, really big part of the history of the sport in this country. To completely ignore it is ridiculous, in my mind.