Saturday night while most were tired out from so much World Cup watching, FC Dallas returned to league play in New Jersey. Maybe the lightly attended and watched game was for the best, because, the Huntsmen had a most embarrassing result - losing 3-0 despite playing with a man advantage for two-thirds of the game.

Meanwhile, team's most important creative asset, Mauro Diaz, was back in Frisco. Again.

Right on time, the little Argentinian has gone missing, or maybe more accurately labeled - unavailable - when the team could use really him. The weird part of this story is Diaz, who in his 4+ seasons in Frisco has only been available maybe 50% of the time, had of late finally found some form and was actually back to helping the team.

Here's the problem - Diaz is not officially hurt and doesn't appear to be. He's not found on the team's Injury Report and by all accounts finished a full 90 minutes without issue in his last appearance - a 2-0 win over Montreal, where he also scored a penalty kick. But he's now not appeared in the 18 for two straight games. Additionally, his participation with the team shifted, as reported by Buzz Carrick, the coaching staff moved Diaz back into his now famous "special training" mode. This is the well-documented practice of pulling Diaz away from the team, limiting his workload, under the guise of minimizing wear and tear. It also has, at times, been a locker room issue with teammates who wonder why everyone else banged up and tired are made to keep trudging on, while Diaz lightly jogs laps around the rest of his team.

Mauro Diaz seemingly had finally found a good mental space about his career and playing in Frisco. A player whose body language speaks volumes louder than any words he ever cared to mutter, has mostly been all smiles, happy Instagram pics, and high fives, even during and after he'd been benched for a short stretch earlier in the season. In fact, the benching seemed to ignite Diaz who returned and promptly popped some assists and flashed those fancy moves the FCD digital team love to replay in slow motion on social media.

All of that has come to a mysterious halt and no one, outside of the coaching staff, seem to know why.

Let's play "theoretical scenarios":

If this is a "save-him-for-the-stretch-run-Mauro", then that is a calculated risk. Saturday night's debacle is a perfect example of a game where Mauro's ability to retain possession was sorely missed. This is also a team recovering from the infamous stall and nosedive of 2017. What happened at Red Bull Arena could simply be a one-off, but Pareja cannot afford to have it turn into "Part 2" of the horror story of last season. He needs a playmaker, now.

If this is "he's-hurt-again-but-we're-not-disclosing-it-Mauro", it highlights both the fragility of a guy who arrived with a thick medical file and the lousiness of the MLS injury report rules. This is the one that is hard to read. Historically Diaz is a guy known for not wanting to play hurt, but lately, he's also has seemed to be willing to fight through and get into the harder tackles a player of his skill tends to attract. And that's what makes this new episode either so odd or so frustrating.

The long-standing question of, "Is Diaz worth it", remains valid. If anyone had told you at the beginning of the season Mauro Diaz would be playing wide on the left in either a midfield or front three, you'd rightly scoffed. But here we are, watching Diaz display some of his razzle-dazzle, hiding out wide left, sometimes wandering into the middle - while a trio of holding mids do all the dirty work. Then there is the reality of how forcing Diaz into a starting 11 with the current roster at his disposal has been problematic for Pareja. It's almost as if he has to have two different teams. One with Diaz and one without - although the false winger concept seemed to have minimized it.

When the club decided to tie itself to Diaz with a new deal in 2015, it was to build around him. The achilles injury threw a serious wrench into that plan. But as the team's highest compensated player ($950K) the judgement of return on investment does not look good. Even if he reappears in the coming days or weeks, if the end result turns out to be a ghosty winger, could you blame anyone for wondering what all the hype was about?

Another note to consider: The last time Mauro Diaz, the team's #10, scored in the run of play? July 16th, 2016. Since then, and this includes his long time out due to the ankle surgery, Diaz has scored six times - all of them are penalty kicks. Now, for argument's sake, Mauro is more of an "assist" guy, and there he's mostly delivered. His eight this year (#2 in MLS) is already tied for his production in a half season (2017). But that just adds to the big question - why isn't he playing?

Along with the surprise departure of Anton Nedyalkov, the morbidly slow return to form of Kellyn Acosta and the whole Colmán disaster - when you add in this new Diaz mystery, you have to marvel at the fact the club sits in 2nd place, undefeated at home and a rare winning road record. You just hope what happened on Saturday night isn't an omen of things to come.

The value of Mauro Diaz has been a great debate for some time. Undeniably, he can be the league's most fun-to-watch guy - but that's only when he's in the game and interested. If we come to find he's hurt or has flaked out again, the front office and Pareja simply have to be considering how to get out from what feels more like a burden than an asset. The promise of a net positive performance of the Magic Unicorn has simply never added up. He's good enough to see how this plays out, but he's also not good enough to allow for another season of crash and burn.