NEW YORK – Major League Soccer Thursday announced that Los Angeles Football Club forward Carlos Vela has been named the MLS All-Star captain following a Twitter fan vote.

Vela, who beat out Red Bulls striker Bradley Wright-Phillips, will wear the captain’s armband as the best from MLS face Italian Serie A Juventus in the MLS All-Star Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta Aug. 1 (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, UniMás, TSN, TVA Sports).

For the first time, fans decided the captain via Twitter hashtag, with each Tweet of a player’s unique hashtag counting as one vote. The four candidates, nominated by All-Star head coach Tata Martino, included Michael Parkhurst (Atlanta United), Diego Valeri (Portland Timbers), Vela and Wright-Phillips.

On Wednesday night, BWP became the fastest MLS player to 100 goals, scoring the lone tally in the 1-0 win at D.C. United. He also was the 11th player in the league-s 23-year history to reach the century mark.

Vela enters the all-star match on the heels of a fine World Cup performance for Mexico, helping to spark a victory over 2014 World Cup champion Germany and scoring a goal in victory over South Korea. In his first season in MLS, Vela has helped expansion side LAFC, scoring seven goals and adding five assists to lead the club to second place in the Western Conference. LAFC also has advanced to the semifinals of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

Front Row Soccer editor Michael Lewis has covered 13 World Cups (eight men, five women), seven Olympics and 25 MLS Cups. He has written about New York City FC, New York Cosmos, the New York Red Bulls and both U.S. national teams for Newsday and has penned a soccer history column for the Guardian.com. Lewis, who has been honored by the Press Club of Long Island and National Soccer Coaches Association of America, is the former editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He has written seven books about the beautiful game and has published ALIVE AND KICKING The incredible but true story of the Rochester Lancers. It is available at Amazon.com.