Each fall, an organization known as Futbol de Primera polls journalists to determine the best U.S. national team player of that calendar year. (For years, they gave away a Honda automobile to the winner; that no longer appears to be the case.)

The Futbol de Primera (formerly Honda) award is better than the U.S. Soccer Federation selection because the USSF results have a spread-it-around feel to them. Don’t want anyone (read: Landon Donovan) winning too often. (He has won the federation award four times; he has won the Futbol de Primera award seven times, and he deserved to.)

This year, in a race in which 202 journalists voted, the good news is that Landon did not win the Futbol de Primera award.

And the bad news?

Clint Dempsey did.

I have written about this before, but the most alarming aspect of the U.S. national team is how dependent it remains on players who emerged a decade ago. The top three vote-getters on this year’s Futbol de Primera ballot?

1. Clint Dempsey.

2. Tim Howard.

3. Landon Donovan.

It’s the same “old” guys who have been leading the team for a long time now, and what is scary is that the same old guys deserve to be 1-2-3. Which U.S. player under 25 ought to have been there off of what the national team did in 2011? Juan Agudelo? Jozy Altidore? Have a look at the national team 2011 stats and see whom you prefer.

I’m not happy that Landon did not have a good year — with the national team, as opposed to the Galaxy. He was nicked up, and he has appeared in only 10 games with the national team and scored one goal. Clint Dempsey has four goals this year, and has played in 12 matches, and he was the better player.

But what is alarming is that the two of them were in the top three, along with Howard.

Dempsey now has won the Futbol de Primera polling twice, and either he or Donovan has won the balloting nine of the 10 times since 2002. The one other guy who got in there? Kasey Keller in 2005, and Kasey is almost old enough to qualify for Social Security.

Additionally scary thing about the U.S. team is that no young guy seems close to a breakout. Yet. Still.

If the Yanks are going to qualify for Brazil, Donovan, Dempsey and Howard will have to do the heavy lifting. And even 2.5 years from now, when all three of those guys will be in their 30s, they almost certainly will be the key performers at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

It speaks well of the three of them that they can do it. It says something far less auspicious about the state of young players in U.S. Soccer that we can’t really imagine (let alone see) which young guys are ready to step up and take responsibility for American soccer.