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Mlssoccer.com's 24 Under 24 rankings were released recently. The rankings, which include the 24 best MLS players under the age of 24, featured just one Houston Dynamo player: Erick Torres.
Cubo, 22, was ranked 11th a year after being graded second. He was on loan in Mexico with Chivas Guadalajara for the first half of the season, which most likely played a big role in his fall. After being recalled, Torres hasn't found his form, only recording a single assist without a goal in nine games in MLS.
He will get the chance to regain his standing among the best young players in the league throughout the final few games of the Dynamo's season, which will be basically meaningless in terms of the playoffs.
He will also be able to try and earn a place with the Mexican national team, as he was selected as part of their U-23 Olympic Qualifying squad.
Elsewhere, FC Dallas's Fabian Castillo was ranked first, Kekuta Manneh of Vancouver was second and Sebastian Lletget of the LA Galaxy was third. Castillo earned his first cap for the Columbian national team this September in a friendly against Peru and has nine goals in seven assists for Dallas this season.
Mlssoccer.com's Matthew Doyle said about Castillo, "there's not a more exciting player in MLS."
Manneh, a native of The Gambia in West Africa, is a star winger for the Whitecaps. He has six goals and six assists on the season. Lletget, formerly of West Ham United in the English Premier League, has been an unheralded performer for the star-studded Galaxy and will surely be on Jurgen Klinsmann's radar for the USMNT in the future.
Cyle Larin, the Orlando City forward who currently has 11 goals on the season, tied for the most of any rookie in history, is tenth, while the Timbers' Lucas Melano, the Argentenian forward signed as a designated player in July, was 19th.
The panel, which included a number of Mlssoccer.com writers and other MLS writers from different websites, selected a preliminary 75-player list from which the final 24 would be chosen. Along with Torres, two other Dynamo players made that ranking: center-back AJ Cochran and midfielder Alexander Lopez.