The Best MLS Player ESPY Award has been presented annually to the player, irrespective of nationality, adjudged to be the best in Major League Soccer in a given calendar year.

Balloting for the award is conducted over the Internet by fans from amongst choices selected by the ESPN Select Nominating Committee. The ESPY Awards ceremony is conducted in July and awards conferred reflect performance and achievement over the twelve months previous to presentation, which period generally includes a portion of each of two MLS seasons.

An ESPY Award (short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award) is an accolade presented by the American cable television network ESPN to recognize individual and team athletic achievement and other sports-related performance during the calendar year preceding a given annual ceremony. The first ESPYs were awarded in 1993. Because of the ceremony's rescheduling prior to the 2002 iteration thereof, awards presented in 2002 were for achievement and performances during the seventeen-plus months previous. As the similarly-styled Grammy (for music), Emmy (for television), and Academy Award (for film), the ESPYs are hosted by a contemporary celebrity; the style, though, is more relaxed, light, and self-referential than that of many other awards shows, with comedic sketches usually included. The host for the 2011 ESPYS is Seth Meyers and the head writer is Jonathan Drubner.

From their inception to 2004, ESPY Award winners were chosen only through voting by fans. Since 2004, sportswriters, broadcasters, sports executives, and sportspersons, collectively experts; or ESPN personalities also vote. Award winners have been selected thereafter exclusively through online fan balloting conducted from amongst candidates selected by the ESPY Select Nominating Committee.

Thierry Daniel Henry (French pronunciation: [tjɛʁi ɑ̃ʁi]; born 17 August 1977) is a French footballer who plays as a striker for New York Red Bulls in Major League Soccer.

Henry was born in Les Ulis, Essonne (a suburb of Paris) where he played for an array of local sides as a youngster and showed great promise as a goal-scorer. He was spotted by AS Monaco in 1990 and signed instantly, making his professional debut in 1994. Good form led to an international call-up in 1998, after which he signed for the Serie A defending champions Juventus. He had a disappointing season playing on the wing, before joining Arsenal for £11 million in 1999.

It was at Arsenal that Henry made his name as a world-class footballer. Despite initially struggling in the Premier League, he emerged as Arsenal's top goal-scorer for almost every season of his tenure there. Under long-time mentor and coach Arsène Wenger, Henry became a prolific striker and Arsenal's all-time leading scorer with 228 goals in all competitions. The Frenchman won two league titles and three FA Cups with the Gunners; he was nominated for the FIFA World Player of the Year twice, was named the PFA Players' Player of the Year twice, and the FWA Footballer of the Year three times. Henry spent his final two seasons with Arsenal as club captain, leading them to the 2006 UEFA Champions League Final.

Dwayne Anthony De Rosario (born May 15, 1978 in Scarborough, Ontario) is a Canadian soccer player who currently plays for D.C. United in Major League Soccer. He also plays for the Canadian national team and is a four time Canadian Player of the Year.

De Rosario is the son of Guyanese immigrants to Canada. He adopted a strict vegan diet in 1994, but started eating fish ten years later. He is married to Brandy De Rosario and has two sons and a daughter. His cousin is Olympic hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. He attended Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute in Scarborough. He currently resides in Bethesda, MD with his family.

De Rosario began his career in 1997 at the age of 18, signing with the Toronto Lynx of the A-League, where his future Canadian national team teammate Paul Stalteri had played. Halfway through the season, however, De Rosario opted to change clubs, signing with German side FSV Zwickau. After two seasons with Zwickau, De Rosario opted to return to North America, signing with the Richmond Kickers in 1999. After a slow 1999 season, in which he registered two goals and five assists, De Rosario exploded in 2000, contributing 15 goals and five assists while leading the team to a 20-6-1 record.

Landon Timothy Donovan (born March 4, 1982) is an American association football player for Los Angeles Galaxy and the United States men's national soccer team. He usually plays as a withdrawn forward, and can also be used as an attacking midfielder on either wing.

A member of the inaugural class of the U.S. Soccer residency program in Bradenton, Florida, Donovan was declared player of the tournament for his role in the national U-17 team that finished fourth in the 1999 FIFA U-17 World Championship, Donovan later signed with the German side Bayer Leverkusen. After six years with the club, the majority of which was spent on loan at the San Jose Earthquakes, Donovan moved to the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2005, though he returned to the Bundesliga for a three-month spell at the start of 2009 on loan to Bayern Munich. He went on loan again from January to March 2010 with English Premier League side Everton, where he scored twice in ten appearances.

For the United States national team, Donovan is the all-time leader in scoring and assists, and has the most caps of all active players. He is a four-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award (the only male to do so and the only male to win in consecutive years), as well as the only three-time winner of the Honda Player of the Year award, having won it seven times. His goals in the 2010 World Cup made Donovan the highest scoring American player in World Cup history and the third American player to score in more than one World Cup (after Brian McBride and Clint Dempsey).