Sporting Kansas City forward Alan Pulido is the 2023 MLS Comeback Player of the Year

Sporting Kansas City forward Alan Pulido stepped out of the club’s media studio at around 1:45 Tuesday afternoon. He exhaled and then hurriedly prepped his burrito bowl in a now-mostly empty team dining room.

Demands on Pulido’s time Tuesday were heavier than usual: an hour-and-a-half block with reporters that ran long, interviewer after interviewer asking the same questions about the Mexican national’s sublime 2023 season in Major League Soccer.

Pulido, who signed here in 2019 and re-signed in September, has had much to do with Sporting KC’s return to the MLS Western Conference Semifinals. Kansas City has a Nov. 26 match date in Houston with the Dynamo, from which the winner advances to the conference finals.

For a season-long effort that’s been nothing short of epic, Pulido was rewarded Wednesday with Major League Soccer’s 2023 Comeback Player of the Year Award.

It’s a hard-earned, and well-deserved, honor for the 32-year-old. Pulido’s comeback this year is striking: After spending more than a year away from the game following a significant knee injury, surgery and recovery process, he returned to score a career-high 14 goals in 26 games.

Pulido put 29 shots on target, converting nearly 50% of them to goals. He tacked on three assists in the regular season and has already equaled that total in Sporting KC’s three postseason matches this fall.

As the season began, there was a real possibility Pulido never returned to top form in the wake of such a devastating knee injury. In an October interview with The Star, Kurt Andrews — Sporting KC’s director of sports medicine — said the surgical procedure that Pulido underwent has had its share of skeptics across the medical community.

It had never been performed on a high-level athlete. Thus, Pulido had no comparison as to what a successful recovery should look like for him. At times, he wondered if he could resume being the player he once was.

“Maybe it’s the start of the end of my career,” Pulido said last month.

And then all he did was come back better than ever.

After scoring his first MLS goal of the year in May, he scored 13 more from June onward. The only player who scored more in that span was Columbus Crew star Cucho Hernandez (15).

As the season progressed, Pulido’s career-defining performances also helped turn the tide for Sporting. Winless in their first 10 matches, they posted a Western Conference-leading record once he scored his first goal of 2023.

Pulido is the fifth player in Sporting KC franchise history to win the league’s comeback award, joining Tony Meola in 2000; Chris Klein in 2002 and 2005; Eddie Johnson in 2007; and Tim Melia in 2015.

Pulido received 34% of the total vote for the award. He overwhelmingly won the media portion (52%) and finished a close second in the player (22%) and club (28%) voting.

Miles Robinson of Atlanta United (runner-up with 25.5%) and João Paulo of the Seattle Sounders (third, 9%) put together strong bounce-back seasons from a torn Achilles and ACL, respectively. But neither produced a collective statistical body of work that rivaled Pulido’s.

So on Tuesday morning, Pulido was summoned to the same Sporting KC training room in which he’d spent so much time in the last two years. It was filled with teammates and club medical staff. The surgeons who performed his operation even joined via Zoom. Balloons spelling out “AP9,” and the stadium’s confetti cannon, blasted him as the group revealed that he had won the award.

After an ensuing whirlwind international media tour via Zoom, Pulido was finally able to sit down to eat his lunch — and debrief with The Star. His name had just been added to the wall inside the Sporting’s dining room, where players’ individual awards, honors and other career achievements are lauded.

Pulido said that upon learning he had won the award, the first people he told were his brother, mother and father. He expressed thanks to the surgeons, team physiotherapists and his family for their support. He’d already thanked Sporting by signing that long-term extension in September.

When asked if there was a phrase, a word or perhaps a verse that he clung to during the most difficult days of his recovery, Pulido offered this:

Work.

“Maybe you are good here,” Pulido said, pointing to his head, “but if you don’t work, you don’t train good …

“For the plan to work, you need to be working strong.”