Sporting KC fans text Matt Besler into the MLS all-star game

Did Sporting Kansas City fans stuff the Major League Soccer all-star ballot? OK, that sounds like an unlikely conspiracy. But consider 24-year-old defender Matt Besler’s election to the MLS all-star team. The league announced yesterday that Besler had received a full 30 percent of the votes texted by fans.

Besler, who is in his third MLS season, raked in almost three times as many text votes as the second-place player during the vote, which ran from June 8 to July 5. This is seriously weird. It’s not that Besler, a former Notre Dame standout, isn’t a good player. But his relative lack of fame and staggering margin of victory reek of a coordinated voting effort.