Want to end an interview with Jimmy Nielsen early? Ask him about being among the league's shutout leaders and holding the best goals-against average of regular 'keepers.
His response? “It's telling me I'm playing for a very good team. That's it.”
Ask him to talk about that team, though, and Nielsen comes back to the interview and warms to the subject.
“No matter what four guys I have in front of me, I know that they will sacrifice for me,” he told MLSsoccer.com on Monday. “They know I would do the same for them. We support each other 100 percent and we want to give everything for each other. That's how you should have your relationship with your defenders – and that's not going to take a week. That's something you've got to build up over time. We've been together for a while now, and we like working with each other.”
There was a time when individual accolades mattered more to the veteran Danish 'keeper – but that time was a decade and a half ago.
“The first time in 1998, when I won Goalkeper of the Year back in Denmark, I was extremely proud and extremely happy,” he said. “The year after, I did not have a very good year. It was not bad. It was not good. It was nothing. It just told me that this is not what soccer's about. Soccer's a team sport.
Of course, with good individual performances, you get the award for that, but that's just a bonus if all that happens,” he said. “The most important thing is that the team is doing well. If you sacrifice for the team, if you give everything you have for the team, the team will pay you back.”
Nielsen is also coming off Goalkeeper of the Year honors this season, after leading MLS with 15 clean sheets in 2012, but there has been little letdown from then to now.
His 12 shutouts tie him with Portland's Donovan Ricketts and Philadelphia's Zac MacMath, his .91 goals-against average is the best of any keeper with more than 10 appearances, and his four saves in last week's scoreless draw at Houston earned him a spot on the latest Team of the Week.
“There's no doubt there's been some games where he came up really, really big,” manager Peter Vermes said. “That last game, he was a different level.”
Like his 'keeper, though, Vermes takes a big-picture approach to Nielsen's numbers.
“I think it's a testament to everything,” he said. “It's not just Jimmy. It's the tenacity with which we defend.”
