NWSL awards season can sometimes feel like a prank, so much so that the classy, self-aware United States defender Becky Sauerbrunn had to casually denounce her own title as Defender of the Year due to funky voting --- not once , but twice !

Snubs season has returned in fine form in 2025, with the initial voting period preventing an MVP candidate from even making the five-player shortlist for her positional award. This is the NWSL's 2000 election moment. Who cast these ballots? Have we accounted for the hanging chads?

Reasonable people can disagree about the winners of each category -- and to set the ground rules up front, an argument for a player here is not a slight on a fellow professional -- but some egregious omissions from shortlists have us fired up about the same thing

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