WCQ - CONCACAF

USA's Christian Pulisic, Sophia Smith among Concacaf 2023-24 Player of the Year finalists

Published Jul. 23, 2024 7:18 p.m. ET

Concacaf announced the nominees for the 2023-24 Men's and Women's Player of the Year on Tuesday, allowing the combination of national team coaches and captains, media members and fans to vote for the winners.

To be eligible for the honor, the selected players had to have played for a Concacaf Member Association's senior national team and also played for a Concacaf and FIFA-sanctioned top division professional league in the Concacaf region.

Among the finalists include U.S. men's national team forward Christian Pulisic, who captained the side at the 2024 Copa América after a standout debut club season at Italian powerhouse AC Milan, and U.S. women's national team forward Sophia Smith, who is one of the most recognizable faces on the USWNT's roster for the 2024 Paris Olympics, which start this week.

Pulisic had 15 goals and nine assists for Milan across all competitions last European club season and has seven goals and two assists for his country across 13 matches since June 2023. He scored a long-distance goal in the first minutes of the U.S.'s 2024 Copa América opener on home soil, but failed to find the back of the net in each of the next two games as the U.S. was eliminated in the group stage, a disappointment that led to the ouster of coach Gregg Berhalter.

Smith has 10 goals and six assists this NWSL season for the Portland Thorns and had 11 goals and five assists for the club last year. She has four goals and two assists in her last eight USWNT caps dating back to the start of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.

The voting period ends on August 2.

Here are the finalists for the Men's and Women's honors, respectively, in alphabetical order.