🇬🇹 🐟 - El Pescadito finds the one that got away
Carlos Ruiz and the balance of loving and hating a player.
Carlos Ruiz was the kind of player you hate unless he’s on your team. I know this because Carlos Ruiz wasn’t on my team, and then he was.
As I was falling in love with local soccer in Fort Worth and hitching my wagon to FC Dallas, Ruiz was winning MLS MVP with the LA Galaxy, scoring goals, and pissing off defenders and referees alike with his antics. I hated him, like every fan of other MLS teams did.
Then, he arrived in Texas, scoring 31 goals during the two years most formative fueling my soccer obsession, the ones in which I’d drive more than an hour each way (It’s better now that the tollway is finished, but Frisco is far, y’all) and watch FCD play some pretty decent soccer for that time. Ruiz was himself. He was petulant, he was feisty and he scored goals. I loved him, like every fan of FC Dallas did.
One of the Ruiz goals I remember best is his fifth-minute opener against the United States in 2012. Ruiz gets left alone (whoops), runs onto a ball over the top, sends Tim Howard stumbling, scores and then immediately appears to slice his hand open on the advertising boards.
For one, I’ve never seen anything quite like it since, the mixture of defensive breakdown, calm finishing and bizarre injury in the celebration.
For another, I was covering the game in Kansas City, sitting in the press box thinking, “Surely the U.S. won’t miss the World Cup.” They didn’t (that year), with a first-half goal from Carlos Bocanegra and two from Clint Dempsey enough to give the U.S. the win. Still, Ruiz had done his part.
(This goal, from 2006 World Cup qualification also is absolutely insane.)
Ruiz has his own favorites. I know this because he posts them on Instagram a lot. If I were an international forward with 68 international goals, there is no doubt I would do the same. Some players seem almost embarrassed of their greatness. Not El Pescadito, whose Insta grid is filled with looks back at goals he scored or titles he won.
Last week, he found ‘the missing goal,’ a 2004 floater from outside the box he scored in a friendly against Venezuela against Caracas.
“Of the 68 goals I scored with the national team, this was the only one that nobody had. I never had the chance to see it, and none of the media outlets in Guatemala or the USA had it in their video library,” Ruiz wrote.
Then, he told a Venezuelan colleague at beIN, where he currently serves as an analyst that was the only goal he didn’t have the clip of. The colleague linked up with someone who had a huge archive of games on VHS tapes, and, well, now you can see it above.
Ruiz almost never stopped. He simply loved scoring goals. That’s how he ended up becoming the top goalscorer all-time in World Cup qualification matches with 39, five of which came in his last match with Los Chapines, a 9-3 win over St. Vincent and the Grenadines. His goals came across WCQ cycles for five World Cups, his international career spanning from 1998-2016 as he solidified himself as the greatest Guatemalan player of all time.
Long after I’d stopped considering myself a ‘supporter’ of FC Dallas and was covering the team professionally for the Dallas Morning News, Ruiz suddenly was back in North Texas. His signing seemed like a bit of a favor from former teammate and then FCD coach Oscar Pareja and the rest of the staff who had fond memories of the forward who turned 37 that day.
Even if that’s all it was, it paid off big for Pareja and Co, with Ruiz coming in as a substitute and scoring to give FC Dallas a 2-1 win over the Seattle Sounders in a late October match that locked up the Supporters’ Shield, one of few trophies in the club’s case.
It was a beautiful moment for Ruiz to end his career on. Scoring again, wearing familiar colors and ultimately ending up on the bottom of a celebratory dog pile. I had to put my journalistic neutrality aside and smile.
Ruiz is one of those players whose capital-L #Legacy is still up in the air. He’s butted heads (at times nobly, at times unnecessarily) with others in Guatemalan soccer. I know I’m not alone in hoping he would work in the federation as a reformer
No matter how his post-playing career plays out, though, what Ruiz achieved on the field is legendary, and I’m glad he found the one that got away.
Next week, we get into the “Who is the best player in Concacaf right now?” debate plus a chat with another figure from the region who is now doing interesting things abroad. Tell your friends about the newsletter so they don’t miss out!