where they are currently training -- awaiting the television broadcast of Tuesday's Barcelona-Chelsea UEFA Champions League match when he found out he was the winner. After the club's staff informed him of the honor, Ruiz celebrated with his teammates.
"El Pescadito" said he is very proud that the goal he scored for the Hoops was the winner. If a goal he had scored for the Los Angeles Galaxy had won, he said, it wouldn't be the same. Ruiz had two goals that he scored while playing for L.A. -- one in 2002 and the other in 2003 -- that were among the original 30 nominees.
"It was a throw-in by Bobby Rhine, who gave it to Roberto Mina, and he saw me making a run to the far post and he made a cross over the defense -- and well, in a matter of fractions of a second I thought of doing a bicycle and a nice goal came out of it," recalled Ruiz of his award-winning strike at RFK Stadium. "The best of all is that we won the game. It's great that that goal won. It's the goal I scored with my actual team; I'm very happy and proud.
"Because of how the goal was and the circumstances of that game I think that the winner was the one I liked the most. The other two [Goal of the Decade nominees] that I scored with ex-teams were nice goals and also had some sentimental value like all the goals I have scored," he added. "But this goal [the winner] is different because I had changed teams and the people wanted to see how would I adapt to a new team, and I think last year I proved many things and I will continue to prove them this year."
Up until the final round of voting, the battle for the title appeared to be a two-horse race, and Ruiz wasn't part of it. With the vote totals resetting to zero after each round of voting, Ruiz's 2005 strike came in third place in the first round, second place in the second and third place in the third. In the final round, though, Ruiz far outpaced his remaining four opponents to win with 36 percent of the final round vote.
Ruiz's second finalist, a bicycle kick he scored in 2003 for the Galaxy, also made a leap in the final round. After finishing in fourth in each of the first three rounds, that strike came in second in the end.
He said his knack for scoring bicycle kicks is a natural gift, and converting one requires good fortune rather than good planning.
"Fortunately I've been able to score [with bicycle kicks] with my national team, with Municipal, the Galaxy, and FC Dallas, but I don't go to the field thinking, 'OK, today I'm going to score with a bicycle kick,'" he said. "It's not that, but sometimes it happens and thanks to the talents each player has, some can do it and some can't. Lucky for me the ones I've attempted came out just right."
Columbus Crew striker John Wolyniec's 2003 volley for the MetroStars against his current club finished in third place after coming in second in rounds one and three and easily taking the top spot in round two, while Dwayne De Rosario's wickedly swerving free kick from 2005 could only muster fourth place after winning rounds one and three. A flick-and-finish effort from 1996 by former Crew forward Brian McBride finished in fifth place.
All told, more than 150,000 votes were cast during the month-long competition, with nearly a quarter of them going to Ruiz's winning goal. After factoring in Ruiz's other two nominated efforts, the third of which was knocked out in the cutdown after round three, the Guatemalan marksman garnered just less than 42 percent of all of the votes cast.
Of the 5,637 goals that have been scored in MLS games over the past 10 seasons, the 30 finalists for each season's Goal of the Year title were nominated for this competition.
Jason Halpin and Juan Mesa are contributors to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
