Climbing the Ladder: Birthday wishes, bumps & bruises

With the holiday season in full swing, people everywhere are getting ready for some of the most special days in the year. There’s a lot to do, but for MLS players every day of the calendar is already full.

That is, at least when it comes to birth dates.

A total of 1,686 players have played at least one competitive game for an MLS team. And now, after 16 seasons, at least one player has been born on each day of the calendar. The final two birth dates out of 366 to be filled in were both by New England Revolution players in the past year: Tim Murray (July 30), who appeared in an Open Cup qualifier, and midseason signing Ryan Guy (Sept. 5).

On the subject of birth dates, one topic that comes up quite often in soccer circles is the makeup of youth national teams. Because the youth World Cups have an age limit, players must be born before Jan. 1 of a given year to participate. There’s often a clear bias in favor of older kids who were born earlier in the year.

This ends up being a problem because having a later birth date is a disadvantage, which means that early physical development is sometimes favored over talent. This “birth date bias” is not just a soccer topic. It’s been analyzed in quite a few other sports and in other areas of life, like education.

What does the distribution of MLS birthdays look like? The table at right contains a comparison of all MLS birth dates with the rosters from this year’s FIFA U-17 and U-20 World Cups, which consists of just more than 1,000 players.

There are more MLS players born in January than any other month, just like the youth internationals. However, it’s not nearly as front-loaded. Breaking it down by quarter, the youth teams saw 37 percent of birth dates in the first three months compared to only 18 percent in the final three. Whereas for MLS, the first quarter makes up 26.4 percent of players compared to 22.6 percent in the last quarter.

Why the difference? First of all, these things balance out when turning professional. Especially in MLS, where the average debut comes at a later age due to the prevalence of college players. But there’s also another likely reason, one that’s American-specific.

Notice how the number of MLS birthdays jumps up in August? That’s due to the cut-off date in American youth soccer traditionally being Aug. 1. Indeed, when looking only at the MLS players whose soccer nationality is American (a little more than half the all-time total), August becomes the most frequent month at 10.5 percent with July becoming the second-lowest. This may change in the future though, because the US Soccer Development Academy and the MLS youth teams within it now use the Jan. 1 date.

The 2011 MLS Foul Awards

Anybody can easily look at the stats to see who led the league in fouls committed (FC) and fouls suffered (FS). But how about which players led the league on a per 90-minute basis? Only players with at least 1,000 minutes played were considered.

The winner this year for most fouls committed? Dejan Rusmir of Columbus.

The Serbian midfielder led the league, which may have contributed to his release when the season concluded. The total leader in fouls caused was Portland's Diego Chara, who didn't even make the top 5 in this category.

As for the fewest fouls committed, the winner is Mamadou “Futty” Danso, of the Portland Timbers.

Seven fouls, no yellows, no reds. Maybe Danso should’ve been nominated for the Fair Play Award? The two-time reigning winner is Sébastien Le Toux, came in at No. 16 on this list; defender of the Year Omar Gonzalez was 12th.

Other defenders who made the top 10 include Chivas USA's Heath Pearce (0.453 fouls per 90), Colorado's Kosuke Kimura (0.481), Real Salt Lake's Nat Borchers (0.495) and Columbus newcomer Sebastián Miranda (0.503), who is the only player in the top 10 to play more than 3,000 minutes this season. He committed only 17 fouls over that time.

The winner for most fouls suffered, meanwhile, is New England Revoltion midfielder Benny Feilhaber. The Brazilian-born US international ranked second in total fouls suffered behind Vancouver’s Gershon Koffie.

Last year’s leader, Javier Morales, only played 785 minutes due to his injury, but he was on pace for the top 10 once again. It's also no surprise that Seattle Sounders midfielder Mauro Rosales, who came in at No. 2 on this list, missed some crucial time down the stretch this season after he was taken down in — what else — a rough tackle.

Interestingly, three players made the top 20 for both fouls committed and suffered: Steven Lenhart, Kenny Mansally and Emilio Rentería.

And lastly, the award for the player least fouled per 90 minutes goes to New England's Chris Tierney.

Tierney was featured in this column earlier in the season when he started the season with a long streak without any fouls suffered. It was eventually broken on July 4, but he ended 2011 with what was easily an all-time low, breaking the mark of 0.062 (1 in 1,459) by Shavar Thomas in 2009.

D.C. United’s Ethan White also bested Thomas’ mark as well.

Meanwhile, New York's Tim Ream is the only player to make the top 10 for both fewest fouls caused and fewest fouls suffered.