[HONDA PLAYER OF THE YEAR] Five-time winner Landon Donovan, Jozy Altidore and Tim Howard are the three finalists for the 2009 Honda Player of the Year Award.
Voting was conducted by 221 sports journalists from across the nation for the award widely recognized as the most prestigious award a U.S. national team player can receive.
The winner will be announced at ceremonies Oct. 20 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. He will receive a new Honda automobile.
Donovan, a finalist for the seventh time, is the all-time goalscorer for the U.S. national team, having scored 41 goals in 118 games. He tied a U.S. record for assists in a season with his ninth of the year on Ricardo Clark‘s goal that gave the USA a 1-0 win at Trinidad & Tobago last month. If Donovan wins the Honda Player of the Year again in 2009, he will repeat his feat of winning three years in a row in 2002-04.
The 19-year-old Altidore is a first-time finalist for the Honda Player of the Year. He became the youngest U.S. player to record a hat trick earlier this year when he scored all three goals in a 3-0 win over Trinidad & Tobago in World Cup qualifying.
Howard, a finalist for the Honda Player of the Year for the third year in a row, received the Golden Glove award at the 2009 Confederations Cup as the best goalkeeper of the tournament.
Previous winners:
2008 Landon Donovan
2007 Landon Donovan
2006 Clint Dempsey
2005 Kasey Keller
2004 Landon Donovan
2003 Landon Donovan
2002 Landon Donovan
2001 Earnie Stewart
2000 Claudio Reyna
1999 Kasey Keller
1998 Cobi Jones
1997 Eddie Pope
1996 Eric Wynalda
1995 Alexi Lalas
1994 Marcelo Balboa
1993 Thomas Dooley
1992 Eric Wynalda
1991 Hugo Perez