This is a big pat on the back, a career “attaboy”, for Landon Donovan, newly retired soccer player who spent nearly all of his career in Major League Soccer.

The league’s Most Valuable Player award will henceforth be known as the Landon Donovan MVP Award, it was announced by the MLS today. (Follow the link for the MLS statement, as well as 50 seconds of loving video of the statue-ish award.)

My first reaction to this was “good for Landon” … and then I began to think about it a bit more deeply.

I love Landon. We all know that.

But he also was MVP of MLS … only once.

He was vastly important to the league, especially when he stuck around in the early part of this century, during the crisis period of 2002-04 when the league contracted from 12 teams to 10 — before rebounding to the 20 we have for the 2015 season. He was widely considered the national team’s best player.

But his importance translated into “best player in the league” status just the once, in 2009. On only one other occasion was he in the final three for the award, in 2008.

If MLS wanted to name the trophy for the guy the MVP electorate thought was most spectacular, it would be known as the Predrag “Preki” Radosavljevic award, because Preki won the thing twice and was in the final three once.

Or the Marco Etchevarry award … or the Dwayne De Rosario award … to name two guys who won the MVP once and were in the final three twice.

The point being that the people who follow the league apparently didn’t think Landon was one of the top three players, aside from two years. A case can be made that they were not paying attention … or it could also suggest that the electorate has been more impressed by one-year spikes in competence than in steady excellence.

Which brings us to this point: How much of this was a political statement by MLS commissioner Don Garber?

Remember, he was in a nasty exchange of comments in October with U.S. national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who has made clear that he doesn’t want his players wasting their time in MLS when they ought to be in Europe.

Landon spent nearly the whole of his 14 professional seasons with MLS, missing bits of time for European forays (nearly all during the MLS offseason) to Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich and Everton (twice).

Look at what Garber said, as the award re-naming was announced:

“Landon Donovan’s commitment to growing the game in North America is unrivaled and his contributions to Major League Soccer are immeasurable. When he joined MLS in 2001, he showed other American players that this was his ‘League of Choice.’ His legacy will be forever etched in our league’s history, and we appreciate everything he has accomplished, both on and off the field.”

And Landon is the same man who holds the U.S. records for most national team goals and assists.

Every time the MLS hands out the Landon Donovan Award, going forward, it will be a statement that the most important American soccer player … was the guy who stuck with the MLS, without it seeming to hurt his career one bit.