I just hope he comes onto the team with a good attitude/gets into shape and wants to excel here. He’ll never get a better chance than this to look good.

Try the Coppola syrah. Good times with that bottle.

I know there’s a “well, at least it’s just a little bit of prostitution” joke in there somewhere, but I’m too hung over to figure it out.

(That’s the problem with good wine. It goes down so easy.)

I have the same final reaction as Laurie (oh that siren can make me laugh!)… because the final analysis says, if we are too whorish (for goals) we might as well just quit and leave the beautiful game to the level of ‘Merkaan gridiron (which, as we all well know, is a “sport” devoid of anything meaningful or artful… just a bunch of fat, steroidally ballooned, mindless crashing about in between long bouts of standing around while adverts make insane amounts of money and “fans” jabber statistics between mouthfuls of beernuts and crushed aluminum cans emptied of malted slog). Which reminds me of that MISL phenom… kinda perverse to mingle football with hockey like that–”just say no” has new meaning there. But anyway, the values of the beautiful game have real meaning so if we whore them for results, we must do so with deliberate and sober consideration.

OTOH, can Ruiz be disciplined into staying focused on his gifts with some well placed boo-ing should he decide to perpetuate his diving practices? Perhaps. ‘Merkaan fans could take lesons from the Brits who have rendered mercilessness to a high art (or a deplorable low, depending… watching Franky getting booed at the Bridge was appalling, wasn’t his fault England lost, he scored f-ing goals for frack’s sakes). If a crybaby gets booed every time he touches the ball, on his home ground after an Oscar performance, perhaps he’ll get the message and focus on footy rather than acting. Maybe?

As for Ruiz, I’ll say it again: yeah, he dives and whines, but he has a track record of scoring goals and was a major factor in getting the Galaxy an MLS Cup title, so I guess you take the bad with the good.

As for your comment about “whoring” out your values, I guess if you feel that way then you feel that way, and yes, as a fellow “chapin” I find his antics deplorable. Then again, if you look at some of the behavior of other footballers around the world (asssault, alleged rape, Drogba), some guy falling on the pitch and pointing at a non-existent mark on his shin doesn’t seem so bad.