Before you go and call me all sorts of names (moron and idiot, would be some of the nicer ones) or accuse me of only paying attention to my team, and possibly not even that well. I want you to re-read that title because I chose my words carefully. I didn’t say “best” (Donovan) or “most valuable” (Beckham, I would do a post on that, but I’ll save that for Laurie over at the LA Galaxy page) or “most outstanding,” (Angel) I chose the word “influential” for a reason. Pick up a dictionary (or find one online since this is the information age) and look-up the word influence, it states: the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.
Carlos Ruiz, more than any other player in MLS, definitely compels the actions of others and for proof you need just look at the recent Gold Cup match between US and Guatemala. For those of you that didn’t see it, all you need to know is that the US is a far superior squad and there’s no reason for that game to be close, except for the exploits of the man who wears the #20 FC Dallas shirt.
Oguchi Onyewu and Carlos Bocanegra are just the latest in a long line of defenders that would agree with my point. Ruiz got under their skin by either using good gamesmanship or dirty tricks (call it what you want) but he forced both of them into uncharacteristically poor games (Although in my opinion, I’m being generous with Bocanegra, I think he’s playing out of position on the national team and isn’t really that good of a defender in the first place, but saying that clouds my point.) He even got to Landon Donovan for good measure late in the game simply because he could.
MLS is littered with defenders who routinely say the player they dislike playing against the most is Carlos Ruiz (go ask your local defender if you don’t believe me) and its because he’s good enough to make you work mentally, strong enough to make you work physically and nasty enough to force you to worry about not overworking emotionally and it’s that last bit that separates Carlos Ruiz from the pack. There are many great players on this side of the Atlantic (I don’t mean to ruffle the feathers of my non-American readers but credit must be given where credit is due) and while an in-form Ruiz can score with the best of them, an out of form Carlos can still make an impact on a game. For example, if Landon Donovan, Eddie Johnson or Taylor Twellman (yeah I stacked the sampling in my favor so what, it’s my blog) are not playing well, a defense may not even know they’re there, but with Carlos you must always pay attention. He honestly didn’t play well in Thursday night’s game, yet not only did Ruiz still almost equalize in the 55th minute he was the focal point for the entire US defense all night long. There isn’t another player in the MLS that can say anything like that (Hold on Red Bull fans, we haven’t seen Juan Pablo Angel long enough, so don’t go crazy on me.)
No matter how he’s playing, “the little fish” forces you to always game plan against him because he’s going to test your mettle in more ways than one and that to me is the definition of influence. Now more astute readers will notice that at the end of the title there is an asterisk and they may ask why. Well that’s a good question, the asterisk is there because of the random rumors that Carlos Ruiz may be traded and if that happens I take it all back because if he came here in another jersey and got under every Hoops’ defender’s skin and we’d have to tell him that this is Dallas where the FC stands for “Foolish Carlos.” (Or hold a sign up that said “Lisa Simpson is a Carlos Ruiz fan”…but then that wouldn’t fit the FC acronym)
