At least the Red Bulls won...

So MLS Week 8 has drawn to a close. There was some good, some bad, and the Red Bulls got their first win of the season.

Diver Down

Some people like him, fewer love him, and the majority hate him. That's right, we're talking about everyone's favorite player Carlos Ruiz for FC Dallas.

I've come to think that Carlos Ruiz is the Barry Bonds of MLS. He's a person that you have to recognize as having an enormous amount of talent and respect his abilities as a player that few in MLS can match, but someone you also don't want to succeed and can never really root for (unless you're an FCD fan).

This weekend Ruiz showed again why he's consistently near the top of the list in scoring goals and always contends for the Golden Boot every season. He's quick, accurate, creative and as shown with his 45+ yard goal over Matt Reis this past weekend, has a vision that only a handful of his peers share. Which is why it's so mind boggling that he feels a need to resort to theatrics so often and so aggressively. It's a shame that such a great player in time will simply be remembered rather than celebrated.

Now that's more like it

Finally we get to taste once more the sweet nectar of high scoring games that we were first introduced to us the opening weekend of MLS. FC Dallas spanks the New England Revolutions for 4 in the first 18 minutes of action and then the New York Red Bulls out-gun Chivas USA for their first victory of the season with a 5-4 win. New Red Bulls signing and Haitian international Jean Philippe Peguero gets the hat trick while 4 different players (including Peguero) scored 2 or more goals.

Steve Sampson, please pick up the white courtesy phone...

You've gotta wonder how much longer Stevo can keep going before someone from the front office's Magic 8 Ball tells them, "The Answer is Definitely Yes" when they ask if they should fire Steve Sampson. That's the only logical reason I can come up with as to why they haven't fired him yet; they're just wanting on the Magic 8 Ball to do the dirty work.


And the order is...

I've decided to do a weekly MLS ranking, as if there aren't enough already. Top to bottom, 1 - 12, I'll post my weekly rankings every Tuesday as that will give me enough time to watch and digest all the games from the weekend. So tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat blog, for the list.