What's this all about?
Back in 2012 back I tried my hand at MLS fantasy soccer. And while I found that I was hopeless at crawling through stats and salaries, there some amazingly sweet names to be found in this league. I put together a team based just on name alone and came up with my first MLS All Name Squad. The team actually did decently.
Since then it's become a bit of a running joke with my fellow RBNY Section 105 pals and I've lazily put one together each year. But last year I decided hey, why not put together a thing to crowdsource a list of the best names in the league. I built this webapp between diaper changes (not my own) and drink refills (my own) on March 4th 2015.
I updated it with new names for 2017 on March 4, 2016 while jetlagged, drinking whiskey and alas watching Portland wallop the Loons.
Honestly I just went through the available rosters and picked out the 50 or so names I thought were the best. If we threw every name in the league in here, this thing would get kind of unweidly. But if there's anyone you're dying to add, email me.
It's also very possible that a few of the names here are trialists or reserves which have since been cut. But a great name is a great name, what can you do.
What's a "great name"? Aren't you just picking on players with "wacky" foreign names?
What makes a great player name is pretty subjective, but 9 out of 10 times to me it comes down to just being kind of fun to say. A few of the others seem to be the result of genuinely spiteful parents and sure, one or two are foreign names that just translate awkwardly or wonderfully to the American Cultural Idiom. Hey, I'm a Swedish guy with a branch of my family tree whose last name is "Puke".
Hopefully this comes across as an exerice in equal opportunity celebration of names that roll off the tongue and if not, I apologize and enjoy a good discussion.
"Ha ha, I found a way to stuff the ballot box for XYZ" and/or "Your code is attrocious".
Yeah I know. I don't really code for my day job any more so this was kind of an exericse in just hacking stuff together. It's ridiculously easy to game. But that said, if you derive enjoyment form gaming an all name squad voting site put together for fun, we can come up with a lot of other ways we can use your extra time. Now more than ever.
Who are you?
I'm Martin Olson, a Brooklyn-residing technical director and New York Red Bulls fan. I don't actually do much hands on coding these days so in some ways this was also just an excuse to dust off App Engine.
Perhaps obviously, this is not licenced by Major League Soccer or condoned by any players, teams etc.
