On the eve of Thanksgiving, the New York Red Bulls announced their 2014 team awards, voted on by local media members.
Bradley Wright-Phillips won the top honor: RBNY’s Most Valuable Player. In his first full season as a Red Bull, BWP has broken the club’s all-time single-season scoring record for the MLS regular season (previously held by Juan Pablo Angel, who scored 19 goals in the 2007 season), the all-time single-season scoring record for all-competitions (Adolfo Valencia scored 21 goals in 2000; BWP has 31 in 2014 to date), and equaled MLS’s all-time single-season scoring record for the regular season (27 goals – as accomplished by Roy Lassiter in 1996 and Chris Wondolowski in 2012).
He is also currently tied with Valencia as the club’s all-time leading scorer in MLS playoffs, having tallied a total of five goals in six career playoff appearances for RBNY (Valencia managed five in eight appearances), including four in four post-season starts this year.
Ambroise Oyongo was voted the team’s Newcomer of the Year.
The 23-year-old Cameroonian is not a rookie: he is credited with winning three league titles and the Cameroon Cupduring his time with Coton Sport FC in his home country. Oyongo also played in the 2013 CAF Champions League with his former club, reaching the semi-finals of that competition. He also won his first cap for Cameroon in July 2013.
But Oyongo landed with RBNY having apparently dropped off his national team radar, and having seen a rumored move to Ligue 1’s Lille fall through. Despite his past achievements, he was not a first-team regular for most of the season. Among this year’s RBNY newcomers, he is third in minutes played (1,461 in 21 appearances in all competitions), behind Armando (1,737 minutes in 25 appearances) and Chris Duvall (1,871 in 22 appearances).
He has, however, made the most of limited opportunities. He has registered four assists so far this season, including delivering arguably the best bad cross in the history of the club: the skewed, sky-ball that BWP converted into the match-winner in RBNY’s opening win of its 2014 playoff campaign.
In the process, he has revived his international career. Oyongo was called into Cameroon’s national team for its first set of 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in September. The Indomitable Lions were rebuilding after an embarrassing performance at the 2014 World Cup. Oyongo was one of several younger players invited to prove themselves by head coach Volker Finke, and one of several of those players to hold on to his place in the team throughout Cameroon’s six-game unbeaten run through its group to qualiffy for AFCON 2015. He has won five caps for his country as a Red Bull.
Luis Robles won every other award on offer: Defensive Player of the Year, Humanitarian of the Year, and Media Good Guy of the Year.
In 2014, he played every minute of every regular season game for RBNY; the second consecutive year he has started every league match for this club. He has also played every minute of every MLS playoff game for RBNY in 2012, 2013 and 2014 (so far).
Along the way, he has reached third on the all-time appearances and minutes played lists for goalkeepers at this club (behind Tim Howard and Tony Meola). He is second on the all-time shutouts list: 20 clean sheets in a career for this team is bested only by Meola’s club record of 30.
But statistics do not convey Robles’s value to the Red Bulls. In 2014, he faced the second-highest number of shots of any ‘keeper in the MLS regular season: 171; that is 16 more than Chivas USA’s regular net-minder, Dan Kennedy, had to handle.
Of those 171 shots, 10 were penalty kicks: the joint-highest (Jon Busch faced the same) number of spot kicks any ‘keeper had to deal with in the 2014 regular season.
These are not good ingredients for a superlative goalkeeping year, indicative as they are of a porous defense.
With almost comical inevitability this season, RBNY seems to need Robles to make one big save before finding the necessary focus to compete in a game.
It has been that kind of year: inconsistencies at the back have cost the team dearly, and several players have seen their reputations in the squad track the rollercoaster trajectory of RBNY’s defense. But not Robles. He has been stalwart, ever-present, seldom-complaining, and unquestionably a team-first player.
The latter quality – he is usually one of the more quotable players after a game, win or lose – explains his Media Good Guy award.
And he does good things with his time off. The club reports Robles keeps to a schedule of monthly visits to children’s hospitals and the Valley Foundation Program for Children with Autism.
