Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Ruiz potentially unavailable for MLS Final
If I supported FC Dallas, I'd be worried about this:
Here's a nightmare scenario developing for FC Dallas: Carlos Ruiz, the league's leading goal scorer, is one of the reasons the club likes its chances of landing in the Nov. 13 MLS Cup final.Although it's a bit far down the road, I could easily see this conflict rearing its head.
But that date conflicts with a playoff for one of the final World Cup 2006 berths. The CONCACAF fourth-place finisher plays a home-and-away series against the fifth-place Asian finisher.
Your current fourth-place team in CONCACAF? That would be Ruiz's Guatemala. And the chance to lift the modest Central American nation, with roughly the population of Illinois, into a World Cup would probably be a pull too strong for Ruiz to resist.
