Season recap pt. IV, Most Valuable Player, a.k.a. “And you thought I was crazy before!”

By: Kevin | June 7th, 2009

Aw, man! When you look at awards and personal accolades for a team that almost ran out of trophies (we left the Copa Catalunya on the table, remember?) over the course of a season, identifying recipients for individual honors can be difficult, verging on impossible.

But in this case, the man we see here is my Most Valuable Player. I expect it to be a controversial choice, to say the least. Some blog spotters here might actually track me down and kneecap me.

Let me make a case for Victor Valdes.

Keepers get zero love. Zero. The Messis, Xavis and Iniestas of the world get all the accolades and plaudits, but what a keeper must do is, essentially, make sure that his side is in a position to win the match by not conceding a goal. In this he relies upon his defense but really, it’s him.

All him, alone on the stage.

We ran up gaudy scorelines this season, but at the other end of it was a lot of small numbers, 1s and 0s. Valdes has conceded goals this season, some of which were his fault, but most weren’t. He’s made blunders, most notably the ridiculous clearance that led directly to an Espanyol goal.

But to me, value is what you do to put the side in position to win and match after match, time after time, Valdes has done that. If we score 3 and give up 4, it doesn’t work. People only began singing his praises late in the season, but think of the key stops he has made this season, stops that if they aren’t made, matches might have been very different. I’ll offer you just two, but they’re huge:

–His stop(s) in the first Clasico, pushing a Sneijder(?) blast over the top, then stonewalling Drenthe, who was in all alone. If either of those go in….

–Stopping Drogba not once, but twice at the Camp Nou, from point-blank range, bailing out his defense, who cocked it up.

If either of those don’t happen, the season is potentially very different. Perhaps instead of the treble, we’re looking at being consoled with the Copa. Messi, Henry and Eto’o score the goals, and Xavi sets them up. But none of it is possible without a keeper who makes the stops that he has to, when he has to.

He’s made some mistakes. Everyone has. Xavi’s missed open shots and had off matches. Messi’s gone missing. Henry and Eto’o have missed sitter after sitter, Iniesta has made like a real-life ghost, and disappeared.

The side still rolled on, because keepers can’t have off matches. When they do, their side usually loses. So for that reason, VV is my MVP. People tend to point to his errors rather than his excellence, which is easy to do, even if the excellence far, far outstrips the errors. His overall season rating won’t reflect his MVP status, because there have been matches where he didn’t have a whole lot to do, but when called upon, almost every time, he did the trick.

Laporta just called Valdes the best keeper in the world. I wouldn’t go that far. But he’s definitely in the Top 10. And when people talk about bringing in other people, Asenjo, Buffon, you name it, pop in that Barca highlights reel, and think about what might have happened if Valdes hadn’t been as good as he was.

Messi or Xavi would have been easy, and obvious. The matches that Messi have won with heroics are the stuff of legend. And Xavi has been inch-perfect almost every moment he’s been on the pitch. But none of it is possible without a goose egg on the other end of the scoreline. Defense had a lot to do with it, but most of the time when they broke down, Valdes was there.

Henceforth, we’ll be trying to sort out transfer nonsense, and boy is there a lot of it to sort out.