Unless you've been living under a rock, you're no doubt familiar with the controversy surrounding Rafael Márquez's post-game comments following Wednesday's 3-1 defeat to visiting Real Salt Lake. Today, Hans Backe and the Red Bulls reacted, suspending Marquez for Saturday's home match against Portland, following a team meeting, according to MLSSoccer.com's Kristian Dyer. Jeremiah Oshan did a great job of breaking down Marquez's impact on the team's results this morning in his SBNation column, concluding that they may be better off without him. If further proof is needed of the Mexican's sub-par form this season, you need to look no further than Ian Thomson's piece from Kick Off Online, which we somehow missed before the postponed Galaxy game.

Credit to Backe and Solér for doing the right thing here. No man should be above the team, whatever salary he may command, and Márquez's comments were detrimental to team morale. Hopefully he has managed to patch things up behind the scenes with his teammates, Tim Ream especially.