Sporting Kansas City goalkeeper Tim Melia was voted MLS Player of the Week for Week 31 of the 2015 season, Major League Soccer announced on Tuesday. Melia recorded the only MLS shutout in Week 31, his eighth of the season, in a 1-0 road win at the Portland Timbers on Saturday.
Melia kept his second clean sheet in a month's time at Providence Park, becoming the first goalkeeper to hold the Timbers scoreless at home twice in one season in the club's five-year history. In doing so, he extended Portland's scoreless streak against Sporting KC to 392 minutes dating back to 2013.
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The defensive performance came with two rookie SuperDraft picks at outside back (Amadou Dia and Saad Abdul-Salaam) along with three Kansas City natives (Matt Besler, Kevin Ellis and Erik Palmer-Brown) on the backline in front of Melia. Krisztian Nemeth came off the bench to score a stunning 83rd-minute game-winner and Sporting KC snapped the Timbers 14-game home unbeaten streak against Western Conference opponents.
Melia, in his first season as an MLS starter, logged six saves in the victory and is the first KC goalkeeper since Kevin Hartman in 2008 to make six saves in four different matches during a regular season campaign. In addition, he was credited with three punches on Saturday and leads all MLS goalkeepers with 31 punches this year.
Melia is 14-6-5 as a starter for Sporting KC this season with a 1.14 goals against average across all competitions. He started all five matches in the club's Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup championship run, making seven saves in last week's final in addition to two stops in the penalty shootout.
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The MLS Player of the Week is selected each week of the regular season by a panel of journalists from North American Soccer Reporters. The group consists of members of print, television, radio and online media.
For the first time since 2006, Sporting KC has had three different players earn MLS Player of the Week honors in a single season in 2015. Paulo Nagamura received the recognition in Week 24 and Benny Feilhaber was selected for the award in Week 29.
Sporting KC's MLS Player of the Week History
1996 - Preki (Week 8), Mark Chung (Week 12)
1997 - Preki (Weeks 12 & 14)
1998 - Vitalis Takawira (Week 10)
1999 - Chris Klein (Week 19)
2000 - Peter Vermes (Week 10), Tony Meola (Week 15)
2001 - Chris Klein (Week 2), Chris Brown (Week 3)
2002 - Chris Klein (Week 4), Tony Meola (Week 21)
2003 - Chris Klein (Weeks 2 & 27), Preki (Weeks 9 & 12), Igor Simutenkov (Week 15)
2004 - Davy Arnaud (Week 14)
2005 - Josh Wolff (Weeks 7 & 20)
2006 - Scott Sealy (Week 12), Davy Arnaud (Week 24), Josh Wolff (Week 27), Jose Burciaga (Week 28)
2007 - Eddie Johnson (Weeks 2, 8 & 9), Scott Sealy (Week 24)
2008 - Claudio Lopez (Week 30)
2009 - Josh Wolff (Weeks 5, 9 & 25)
2011 - Omar Bravo (Week 1), Graham Zusi (Week 23)
2013 - Graham Zusi (Week 10)
2014 - Graham Zusi (Week 4), Benny Feilhaber (Week 19)
2015 - Paulo Nagamura (Week 24), Benny Feilhaber (Week 29), Tim Melia (Week 31)
