After 23 years of the league’s existence, a Major League Soccer team will honor a former player with a statue, encasing his visage in brass, bronze or whatever Fulham’s Michael Jackson statue was made out of. It will maintain the image of the twilight of his youth and virility through the ages. Fitting, too, that the first club to bestow this sort of honor in MLS is the Los Angeles Galaxy—winners of a record five MLS Cups, runners-up for the honor four more times, and the last MLS team to be club champions of CONCACAF.



The Galaxy are as storied as it gets in MLS. And boy, do they have players to choose from when it comes to statue candidates. Maybe Carlos Ruiz, the Guatemalan forward known as El Pescadito, who scored a ridiculous 51 goals in his 82 Galaxy appearances. Perhaps Mauricio Cienfuegos, the original Galaxy magician. Cobi Jones could certainly be in the conversation—the record holder for U.S. national team and Galaxy appearances, who followed...