While the Major League Soccer has seen many great players over its 25 years, who are the best five goalkeepers of all time?

At MLS Multiplex, we looked back at the numbers, including awards, games played, goals scored, and shutouts made, to determine who we believe to be the top five players at each of the seven most important positions.

We have covered the defenders, the midfielders, the wingers, the forwards, and the strikers, and now we will begin with the goalkeepers.

Many great goalkeepers have graced Major League Soccer over its 25 years, with many having won both the Goalkeeper of the Year and MLS Cup. However, only one goalkeeper in MLS history has been named league MVP.

We rank him among the top five goalkeepers of all time, alongside three other players who have won the award for best goalie twice. Notable American Premier League goalkeepers include Tim Howard, Kasey Keller, and Kevin Hartman; Joe Cannon, the fourth goalkeeper to win Goalkeeper of the Year twice, almost missed the cut.

Who are the five men who made our list of the best of all time? They include not only the MVP and Goalkeeper of the Year but also the player with the most career saves.

Donovan Ricketts, No. 5

Donovan Ricketts, a former captain of the Jamaican national team, is the first of the top five goalkeepers in MLS history to make our cut.

After playing in his home Jamaica in the English Premier League, the goalkeeper who made a century of international appearances for the Reggae Boyz spent eight seasons in Major League Soccer.

After a successful stint in England and two Caribbean Cup victories with Jamaica, Ricketts made the jump to Major League Soccer with a move to the LA Galaxy before the 2009 season. He made an immediate impact, earning MLS Player of the Week honors after helping the Galaxy shut out Chivas USA in his debut.

With the Jamaican keeper in goal, the Galaxy were able to go undefeated through the regular season and into the MLS Cup final in their first year together. A year later, he made history by being the first “foreign player” (excluding Canada’s Pat Onstad, whose teams play in MLS) to win the prestigious Goalkeeper of the Year honor.

He had a phenomenal season that earned him the honor and a spot in the 2010 MLS Best XI. He helped the LA Galaxy tie a club record by recording 11 clean sheets in 29 regular season games.

In 2011, he was a member of the LA Galaxy club that won the MLS Cup, but he missed over half the season due to injury. After the season ended, he traveled to Canada and signed with expansion team Montreal Impact for the 2012 season.

Before being traded to the Portland Timbers for the remainder of the 2012 season, Ricketts was the goalkeeper for the club’s first ever Major League Soccer win and recorded three shutouts in 24 league appearances.

In 2013, during his first full season in Portland, he won the MLS Goalkeeper of the Year title for a second time, joining an elite group of only three other players in the league’s 25-year history to accomplish this feat. Ricketts won the honor after posting a league-best 14 shutouts and setting a Timbers record with a 405-minute scoreless streak, the longest such run by a goalie in the team’s history.

He stayed in Portland for another year before being taken first overall in the MLS Expansion Draft in 2014. During the 2015 season, Ricketts also played for Orlando City SC, one of two expansion teams in Major League Soccer (MLS), along with New York City FC.

Before returning to LA Galaxy for the second half of the 2015 season, which would be the end of his career, he only played ten matches for the Lions. Ricketts played 11 times for the club in the second half of his final season, bringing his total MLS appearances to 200 (188 in the regular season and 12 in the playoffs).

The now-42-year-old paved the way for other Jamaican goalkeepers to have success in Major League Soccer; Andre Blake, the starting goalkeeper for the Philadelphia Union, won Goalkeeper of the Year in 2016. During his eight years in the United States, Ricketts won two GKOTY awards, was named to two Best XI teams, and won an MLS Cup.