Heart of a...Very Fast and Sneaky South American Jungle Cat?

Today's post is hard, because it's a hard day. Today's the day we say buh-bye to Jaime Moreno. Some of us are in apocalyptic high dudgeon. That's okay, I'm going to spend a paragraph riding my own hobby horse in a moment. I'm just sad that it's over, but I'm a weepy nostalgic little fanbitch.

Jaime's been old for a while. He's not the same Jaime who led the team to multiple MLS Cups, or the same one who was always good for a goal. His penultimate MLS appearance was a fucking joke, courtesy of the tragedy that is MLS referee Alex Prus (and a relatively trustworthy but fan-based site tells me that there will be no Alex Prus tonight--and no Kevin Stott, who would, and I say this with unshakable certainty, be unable to resist showing up Jaime in his final MLS appearance), who essentially ejected Moreno from the game in the 8th or 9th minute for being viciously fouled--after having ejected Benny Olsen and his Houston counterpart for shaking hands in the previous game. But this post isn't about Alex Prus being an infected sack of dripping syphilitic pus with the vision, judgment, and common sense of the same, who deserves to be half-hung, drawn, and quartered. Inside of a wasps nest. Believe, me, I've got more, but it's Jaime's day.

By the way, BFF, here's how you size images:

I'm not overlaying my links!

BFF's been running that poster image all week--happy day for you, Sasha, your long national nightmare is nearly over--and there's absolutely no chance that Ilse and I will be among the first 10,000 people into the gates to get one. Dinner's more important than a poster.

It's a nice poster, and contrary to Sasha's base impulses, the coloring is absolutely spot on. So's the list of accomplishments. Jaime is simply the best MLS player of all time, and while Jeff Cunningham will eclipse his goal total, he won't have done it with the style and flair that Moreno displayed every time (before 2010) that he stepped onto the field.

It's right that it's happening now. Jaime's clearly tired, and the team's management has clearly pissed him off so much, and the quality of the players around him is so poor (though they at least have the decency to worship him as the living god that he is), that his heart can't be in it, and it's showed. We'll go to RFK for the last trudge of the season (we've done far harder trudges this year alone) partly because it's the last ticket in the book, and partly because Date Night is real hard to come by these days, but entirely to thank Jaime and give him one last crowd--the thing he deserves. We can hope that, somehow, the futbol gods agree and shower him with goal-love. Vaya con Dios, Jay-mee Mor-ee-no¹.

And always and forever, Vamos United.

¹ This joke is so far inside it doesn't even know there is an outside.