If you watched the match, this is the place for all post game thoughts.  There is really no time for a detailed match report, because I would have fallen asleep if Carlos Ruiz hadn't made me curse at him.  Anyway, if you saw the match, let me know what you think after the jump. What was [...]

Just how bad is it in the LA Galaxy organization right now? Bad enough that some heads could roll after yesterday's surprising loss on the road to expansion side San Jose. Yesterday, SI.com's Jonah Freedman uncovered some very interesting things going on with the Galaxy, AEG president and CEO Tim Lieweke visited the Galaxy locker room [.

Just received this link to Max Zeger's article on the possible, but sounding more probably, trade.

And I know that Benny Feilhaber's looking to come back to the States as well.

Here's a piece of Zeger's post:

Alexi Lalas has been trying to ship Carlos Ruiz somewhere for a while now.

Pitch Invasion proudly welcomes a new contributer today. Mike Gumballhead will comment philosophically on pressing issues of world football whenever he is gripped by an overwhelming fever, as he was today by the Galaxy's latest shrewd move towards world domination. It's long been my suspicion that Alexi Lalas is a genius cunningly disguised as a ginger [.

It's transfer time, and our defense is a sieve. So what's standing in the way of our purchasing some really good defenders?

Two things: Money, and roster spots.

In short, we can't purchase any players until we get rid of a non-developmental player and his salary to free up some cap space.

 The morning after let's me see things so much clearer.  I 've got some post-match thoughts which many of you might share (Carlos Ruiz anybody), and some quotes from Tim Howard about Senor Ruiz.Carlos Ruiz After a good night's sleep, I'm still fuming at Ruiz.  He is a dirty dirty player and I'd say just about [.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

The details finally emerged on the Carlos Ruiz trade from LA to Toronto FC on Thursday and they were shocking to say the least. The LA Galaxy shipped Ruiz to Toronto FC for a pair of supplemental draft picks.

I must admit despite the speculation I was mildly surprised by the news Carlos Ruiz has returned to the LA Galaxy. I understand that the Galaxy have Joe Cannon and Clint Mathis both off the books and that the three "DPs" (David Beckham, Carlos Ruiz and Landon Donovan) only count 400k each towards the approximately $2.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

The Los Angeles Galaxy has traded Carlos Ruiz to Toronto FC, sources told SBI on Tuesday evening. Details of the deal were not available yet. To make room for Ruiz on the roster, TFC has waived French midfielder Laurent Robert.

I hope you guys all had awesome Christmases. I certainly did.
There is literally nothing going on right now in the world of TFC, but that's understandable. I think it will be pretty quiet until the "big splash" happens (which could be January 6).
If you remember, last week someone noticed that Carlos Ruiz has apparently been released.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

The Los Angeles Galaxy needs money. No, not actual cash (they have sold enough David Beckham jerseys not to need actual cash). What LA needs is allocation money and salary cap space (despite what the Bottomless Galaxy Salary Cap jokes suggest).

Photo from CBC.ca With yesterday's deal for Carlos Ruiz, Mo Johnston has proven once again he can make a deal to keep his team ahead of the curve or in this case from falling off the curve. Major League Soccer has very few proven consistent goal scoring talents. TFC had one in Jeff Cunningham, but now [.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

The U.S. men's national team defeated Guatemala on Wednesday night, 1-0, in the opening match of the World Cup Qualifying group stage. It wasn't pretty. In fact, it was downright ugly for the Americans for the first 60 minutes of the match.

The Galaxy are ugly and getting uglier.

Sniping. Name-calling. Signs of locker room discontent. Is the Galaxy big enough for all this?

This is a team whose confidence looks shot and whose players are riven with doubts.

The basic question: how can a team with David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Carlos Ruiz in the line-up not only look so bad in Sunday's tortured 4-1 loss to Dallas, but have failed to win in the last six games?

With the MLS season reaching its midway point, it is tough to argue against New England and D.C. being the best teams in the league right now, and part of the reason for that is the recent form of two MLS All-Stars who have stepped their game up considerably. SBI correspondent Carl Setterlund takes a look at the hottest players in MLS.

Just when you thought the league turned the corner on ridiculous rules and regulations, we get this - MLS has blocked Red Bulls transfer of Atlanta Silverback standout, Kanji.

Grandfathering Carlos Ruiz is fine.

Grandfathering Landon Donovan? No problem Beckha .

In further confirmation that the MLS Summer Silly Season is firmly upon us, we received the following email below yesterday afternoon and sat on it while we did what we could to confirm at least parts of this story. That confirmation has now come in the form of this article in the Columbus Dispatch.

Just received in our inbox from our good friends at RojoMania.comAs we awit our first bit of real news from the MLS Bodysnatchers Expansion Draft, we got an interesting email which stated simply: "If Sigi takes the 2 million then Carlos Ruiz and Marco Pappa follow."An english translation of the above is:Carlos Ruiz and Marco Pappa Will Go Today in The Major League Soccer Expansion Draft after Toronto and the Fire left them:Unprotected!

Are you serious? Is this a joke? You people are playing a joke on me aren't you?
JOKE

I know Steve started this, and Lalas I'm sure is snickering in the back. Is Preki in on it too?

Briefly:

*As expected, Chivas USA goalkeeper Brad Guzan seems finally on his way to Aston Villa.

*The mighty Galaxy reserves got their first victory today of the season, beating Chivas USA 5-3 on a brace apiece from Carlos Ruiz and Alan Gordon, while young Izzy Sesay got the final goal.

And that is why we are 0-3-3 in the last six games.

That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

In teaching theory, "Stephen Krashen offers three ‘affective variables' that have been identified as being related to language-acquisition : these are ‘motivation', ‘self-confidence' and ‘anxiety'.

Our good friends of MLS en Espanol translated some of the article we got from RojoMania.com
For Sale. Or Lease. Or whatever the buyers wants.
Marco Pappa and Carlos Ruiz, both Guatemalans, are in the group of the "unprotected" players for the MLS draft that will take place today.

Hat-tip to Razcle on the Red Patch Boys forum for this.
It looks like when we traded for DeRo, Carlos Ruiz was released at the same time. Here is an excerpt from an article by the Canadian Press:
"Toronto helped clear some of financial obligations by releasing high-priced Guatemalan forward Carlos Ruiz, acquired in an August deal with the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Well, it seems a few things have happened in the last few days. Guess I should catch up a bit. The big news, for LA fans, is that Fish will be returning. LA fans are split by this move. They either love or hate it. I'm in the camp that believes no [...]

Now that the transfer window is open, one MLS club is looking to ship out rather than bring in. Seeing how soccer is a game of imports and exports, it is fitting to see things happen like this from time to time. A lot could happen between now and the end of the summer transfer window [...]

This is another one of those deals that we've been waiting for a while now to come to a conclusion. Will the LA Galaxy trade striker Carlos Ruiz or won't they? It's been a strange few weeks really but today I've got more word that they are still shopping him and a new party has [...]

The Galaxy have finally offloaded Carlos Ruiz.  The negotiations between Toronto and LA has been going on for quite some time, but last night, an agreement was reached.  Sources with knowledge of the negotiation say that LA will receive a draft pick, and they will finally have the cap-space to add Eddie Lewis to their [.

That's the word from our usually reliable friends at RojoMania.
We're not sure what to make of it as it drops the bombshell disclosure that Schelotto won't be back next year.
Here is a hastily done "Google Translation".

Sigi Schmid asked to Ruiz in 2009 after the inevitable departure of Guillermo Barros Schelotto of the Columbus Crew
Rene Romano
rojomania_news@yahoo.

It is no secret that Galaxy gaffer, Ruud Gullit is not on good terms with Carlos "El Pescadito" Ruiz. And it is an open secret that LA has been shopping Ruiz around the league. There have even been some who suggest he may be headed back to play for a club in Guatemala. We may soon have an answer to the questions regarding Ruiz's future.

What can we say other than we called it.
While it didn't go down as part of an epic 3-way trade involving Brian McBride, our sources were right in that El Pescado still ended up with a new northern pond.
Read more about that here.
We hope he likes the water temperature there.

Carlos Ruiz on on his way out of FC Dallas and going back to his first MLS team the LA Galaxy. The Galaxy paid an undisclosed amount of allocation money as well as a 2nd round draft pick to bring Ruiz back to LA.

The Kansas City Wizards have sent a quality defender, Nick Garcia, to the San Jose Earthquakes in exchange for the first overall pick in the expansion draft that will take place this Friday.

It starts here.

Did that get you in the mood for today's U.S.-Barbados qualifier at Home Depot Center?

The game begins at 2 p.m. live on ESPN2 and Galavision.

Here's a game preview from the U.S. perspective and another from the view of Barbados wherein we learn the name of Barbados' playmaker: Norm.

I'm trying to crank out my PE column tonight so I don't have to worry about it on Monday morning, which is a good thing since I'm going to be out and about most of the day. I'm writing a column on the horrendous scheduling by Major League Soccer and how they're playing right through World Cup qualifying.

In recent days, the LA Galaxy have opened up a lot of salary space putting to their plans to land someone big. Turns out their eyes were on 'little fish' Carlos Ruiz.
FC Dallas has made it official, Ruiz is no long a member of the team. In return for the trade, FCD got 'an undisclosed amount of Allocation money and LA's natural second round pick in the 2009 MLS SuperDraft.

US 1-0 Barbados
In a game that saw the favorites look tired and even more defensive minded then normal, the underdogs had their chance to run the game. But unlike the Italy-Spain Euro match, the US was able to see their opposition out of the competition.
Yesterday's game was a flashback for me as right from the opening moments, it reminded me of some late-80's games due to the horrible video production.

I cant believe Toronto FC have waived Laurent Robert.In the same week they will say goodbye to Maurice Edu who has signed with Glasgow Rangers Toronto has released the 33 year old Midfielder.In his stead Toronto has signed former L.A. Galaxy striker Carlos Ruiz to the club.Ruiz is five years younger and has an MLS pedigree before loosing his job to Edson Buddle.

Toronto FC have dropped French midfielder Robert Laurent and added Carlos Ruiz to their roster. The French midfielder joined TFC at the beginning of April this year and started 16 of 17 games since then. In those games he has 1 goal and 3 assists.

Carlos Ruiz joins after another short time spent with the LA Galaxy.

We finally got some confirmation that two deals went down today that we've been talking about for a couple days now. LA Galaxy ships striker Carlos Ruiz to Toronto FC for a first and second round pick in the 2009 MLS Supplemental Draft and salary budget considerations. The Galaxy also sign veteran midfielder/defender Eddie Lewis.

A couple weeks ago I posted the start of a comprehensive list to track all player moves before the season starts. I haven't noticed anyone doing this and it seemed an important thing to keep track of for future use. We tend to forget things like when last year the Rapids traded a major allocation to Toronto for Conor Casey with Toronto FC picking up part of Casey's salary for the year.

As much fun as it is to only focus on the great show the US put on yesterday, there were ten other Concacaf Qualifiers over the weekend. So how did they turn out? Most of them went as expected, but there were a couple shocks.
Trinidad and Tobago 1-2 Bermuda - T&T get shocked at home by Bermuda.