ProSoccerTalk Player of the Week: Chicago’s Sherjill MacDonald

Selecting Player of the Week gets difficult when we get an outstanding performance – although one perhaps not as essential to a result as another bright outing elsewhere in the league.

Chris Wondolowski’s hat trick against Colorado got a lot of splashy headline treatment, and it certainly should have. The record-chasing element further elevates this intriguing story. But was it really the performance that tipped the balance in a match (one that finished 4-1)?

It’s just a judgment call, of course. Last week, Thierry Henry was our Player of the Week, and you could argue that his team might have been fine without his goal and three assist. Mostly, I suppose, it comes down to what else is out there and whether the night in question was spectacularly dazzling or just damned good?

In this case, I saw something else every bit as deserving as Wondolowski’s night, not only for the individual performance aspect, but also for what it meant to his team.

The Chicago Fire was going the wrong way, clearly, having lost two in a row at a highly inopportune moment.

So Sherjill MacDonald delivered the very kind of afternoon, smart, skillful and determined all at once, that can turn a team’s fortunes.

The Fire’s Dutch striker was massive in his hold-up play and work off the ball in the visitor’s 2-0 win at New York. He had both goals, opportunistic finishes in the 65^th and 79^th minutes as Chicago made a huge move up the Eastern Conference table.

Here’s his first goal, the better of the two:

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