UPDATED: Ronaldinho to LA Galaxy. The rumor that won’t die.

UPDATE BELOW! TWICE!

A week or so ago, one of our readers hit us up with a private email on the transfer rumor with nine lives, the one that claims that Ronaldinho is definitely on his way to the LA Galaxy and definitely during this transfer window – the one that officially opened today.

Specifically our confidante, who says he can’t come out right and say how he exactly knows for sure that the player in question will be in Galaxy uniform, lays it out like this:

“Ronaldinho will join the Galaxy in August. This is no longer a rumor.

The obvious question is how I could know this. I cannot “tell you”, but I believe that the two of you are smart enough to connect the dots.

I am partners in a garment factory in Thailand. Our two biggest customers are, of course NIKE and Adidas. We have been the preferred contractor for LA Galaxy gear for many years now.”

And he tells us that he is sharing his nuggets of goodness with us because,

“I guess the Americans run in the WC has peeked my interest in the Galaxy even more than usual.”

Which is awesome. The Galaxy’s own Landon Donovan’s stirring performance against Algeria pays off on the rumor front! (I should also say that in America we spell “peeked” as “piqued” but then I’m known for living La Vida Pedant.)

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of this rumor. For one thing, I don’t see how the Galaxy can deal with the salary cap issue. They’ve essentially got two DP’s in David Beckham (you remember him, right?) and Landon and will need to be offering enhanced salaries to guys like Omar Gonzalez, Sean Franklin, and AJ DeLaGarza even as they contemplate how to buy Juninho from Sao Paulo. The almost $800K hit that Donovan and Beckham put on the $2.4-ish million salary cap combined with those other factors leaves basically no room for another DP hit.

Unless you, I don’t know, decided to, say, sell Landon Donovan to someone. And he is never going to be worth more than he is right now. He’s 28, he’s now proved himself in the EPL and had a decent World Cup, plus was the MLS MVP in 2008. If he’s going to sell for his max value, then now’s the time.

But today, as reported by ESPN during halftime for the DC United – Seattle Sounders FC game, MLS Commissioner Don Garber went out of his way to state as categorically as he could that MLS was NOT entertaining any offers for Donovan’s services. Too valuable to MLS he says.

That strikes me as staking out a hard bargaining position, looking to clear out all the offers from clubs that are trying to see if they can pull one over on a young league just happy to have a few obviously talented players. But maybe Garber and the rest of the MLS brain trust really see Donovan as unsellable. Maybe. But I doubt it.

And just through some fire on the rumor mill more than our confidante already has, folks are using their Twitter feeds to stoke the Ronaldinho to LA idea. Craig Stouffer, who writes for the DC Examiner, and can be found on Twitter here, @criagstouffer, tweeted this on Wednesday July 15 at about 4:52 PDT:

“Am still hearing that Ronaldinho to #lagalaxy remains a possibility. One issue: #acmilan needs to land a replacement to satisfy its fans. about 3 hours ago via HootSuite”.

This was also retweeted by the folks who write @mlsdaily.

UPDATE: Frank, one our frequent commentors, notes that he saw a comment today on an RSL-oriented site, “On the Bill & Spence show this afternoon, Dave Checketts just hinted of a big Galaxy DP signing of a world renowned Brazilian! Ronaldhino??”

UPDATE TWO: Speaking of Dave Checketts and this fab rumor, the folks at ESPN’s Soccernet have written it up. You can read it here. And the fine folks at, umm, Peace FM Online (no I’ve never heard of it either) also have a story about Ronaldinho definitley leaving AC Milan, though they play up his relocation to Flamengo in Brazil.

By my count that makes it:

–Anonymous oversees garment industry dude
–Online newspaper sports writer
–MLS newbits website echoing online newspaper sports writer
–Anonymous RSL fan paraphrasing RSL owner Dave Checketts on a local sports show
–ESPN Soccernet
–Peace FM Online

It’s a preponderance of sources, but not so many with a lot of journalistic cred. Though, you’d like to think that Soccernet is more journalistic than, say, some random LA Galaxy fan blog. But then, you have to trust the Checketts is being straight with us. This is why rumors are so awesome. You can really dig into all kinds of dark places and come up with all kinds of scenarios. They are like little conspiracy theories.

So, now it’s up to you folks to figure out how real this rumor really is. Is that enough people with enough gravitas? Or is that just a lot of “heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend”?

Can the Galaxy come up with the cap space they need to sign what would be a third DP? (And, technically, they need to spend $250,000 in allocation money to get the third DP slot. Do they even have that for starters?) Are they going to drop Landon and/or Becks come 2011? What do you think? Leave your answers in the comments below.

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Category: 2010 Season, Transfer Rumors