Why playoff-bound Charlotte FC says Kahlina deserves to be MLS Goalkeeper of the Year

Well after it was over — after the trio of Charlotte FC goals and the team’s 12th clean sheet and the conclusion of the club’s best all-time regular-season finish — the visiting crowd boomed the same three syllables over and over and over.

KAH-LI-NA!

KAH-LI-NA!

Kristijan Kahlina, the Charlotte FC goalkeeper whose steadfastness springs eternal, then charged up to the crowd and uppercut the air. The crowd clamored for more. His teammates then mobbed him — heaping water and praise, celebrating what their defensive leader has already done and dreaming of what he’ll continue to do.

And after the game, all the men decked in royal blue made it clear: They shouldn’t be the only ones to celebrate Kahlina’s success this year.

“I think he should be keeper of the year,” head coach Dean Smith told The Charlotte Observer after the team’s 3-0 win over D.C. United. The win locked Charlotte FC into the fifth seed of the MLS playoffs, which pits the club against Orlando City SC in a best-of-three series which starts on Sunday on the road.

“I think he’s the biggest turnaround that people have seen, in terms of how many goals we conceded last season to how many goals we’ve conceded this season,” Smith continued about Kahlina. “And he’s been a massive part of that. Twelve clean sheets, he’s outstanding. And he’s been pivotal for us.”

By Saturday’s end, Kahlina finished with 121 saves on the season — tied for fourth-most in the league — and has played every minute of every contest for a team that gave up the second-fewest goals (37) in MLS. That’s a huge contrast to last year: Kahlina missed the first part of the 2024 season recovering from back surgery, and when he did return, he was the backstopper to a tattered defense that gave up 52 goals on the season. (At one point early on in his return, 20 games into the season, the team was tied for first in most goals allowed at 35.)

He’s healthy this year. Happy. And a fixture on a defense that under Smith has been the key to Charlotte FC’s best season to date.

“For myself, it’s the best season of my career,” Kahlina said in an interview. “And consistently, from the first game to the last game, it’s not easy to play on a high level, but I’ve shown that I can. It’s just on me to show from game to game that I can repeat this.”

What Goalkeeper of the Year would mean to Kristijan Kahlina

Kahlina said that “it would mean a lot” to win MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, which is awarded to the game’s top goalkeeper at the conclusion of the season.

He also said he doesn’t feel slighted at all for not being selected in July to the All-Star team — a voting process that included the input (in varying degrees) from MLS players, fans, media, All-Star head coach Wilfried Nancy and league commissioner Don Garber.

In fact, he said, the perceived All-Star snub “pushed me more, made me train harder. And maybe (any) awards I get results from this because they didn’t pick me. ... It’s just on me to show them who I am.”

Ask anyone in the Charlotte FC building, and they’ll tell you about Kahlina’s work ethic. How he shows up early and stays late and gets a bunch of treatment to avoid having to miss time. How he makes the hard saves look easy — catching anything in sight — and prepares like a madman week to week: preparing for new strikers, studying how they shoot, how they cross, what their tendencies are.

Ask Patrick Agyemang, the team’s gifted and physical striker, and he’ll laugh about how intense Kahlina can get at practice.

“He’s a leader,” Agyemang said. He smiled: “I tell him all the time, ‘Don’t scream at me too much!’ But nah, I think everyone wants someone like that in the locker room. He leads by example, from warming up before a game, in training he’s the first one warming up and all these things. He leads by example. So I think all his hard work and dedication to the sport is paying off for now.

“And I definitely think he should be Goalkeeper of the Year. That should be no question.”

‘Everything from him gives us a big advantage’

That aforementioned Saturday — that win over D.C. United — was important for the team’s playoff positioning. But it was also symbolic.

Charlotte’s contest at Audi Field marked Kahlina’s 100th career MLS appearance. It also polished a full-circle moment for the club as a whole. Audi Field, after all, was the site of Charlotte FC’s first match three seasons ago, in 2022. Kahlina and Brandt Bronico — two guys who loomed large Saturday — are the only two to start both contests.

When asked about how far the club has come in those three years, fresh off the high of victory, Kahlina didn’t blink.

“The first was tough,” Kahlina said of the team’s inaugural season. “The second year, for me, was tougher. But this third year, we got stable with Dean, and this is the biggest difference. We didn’t change a lot of the team, but we changed the style, we changed the structure, we changed how we approached the games, how we prepared for games, how he is calm.”

“He is sometimes maybe too calm for me,” Kahlina joked about his head caoch, “because I’m a guy who likes to say something more. But everything from him gives us a big advantage.”

Smith could say the same thing about Kahlina.