Hair today . . .

The road goes ever on, but not Cobi Jones.

"I've told everyone that I'm retiring and that's where I'm at," the last of the Galaxy originals said.

There will be those who will try to talk him out of it -- David Beckham already has said he'd like to see Jones return next season -- but at 37 and with new fields beckoning, American soccer's own icon is adamant.

"If by some weird or unbelievable circumstance I do end up coming back, it would be the shortest retirement," he said. "But I'm not extending my career. At this point, I'm retiring."

Unless the Galaxy reaches Major League Soccer's playoffs, Jones' final home game will be Thursday night at the Home Depot Center and the final match of his extraordinary career will be Sunday in Chicago, where he could share the field with -- and might steal the spotlight from -- Beckham and Fire standout Cuauhtemoc Blanco.

"Even if it turned out that we didn't make the playoffs and this was it, I could be content with that," Jones said.

And why not?

Few players in the history of U.S. soccer have achieved what Jones has since he first walked out of Westlake Village Westlake High and onto the UCLA campus in 1988.

From there, the soccer road led him to the Barcelona Olympics, where he shared a name with the Games' equally popular mascot, Cobi, and on to the 1994, 1998 and 2002 World Cups. He played a record 164 games for the U.S., appearing in 28 countries, and has played a record 349 games for the Galaxy.

He is one of only 10 original MLS players still in the league and is the only one of the 10 to spend his entire career with one team. Until Landon Donovan recently overtook him, Jones held the U.S. record for assists with 22 and also scored 15 goals for the national team. With the Galaxy, he has 76 goals and 104 assists, both team records.

Jones scored the first-ever Galaxy goal and helped Los Angeles win two MLS titles, the U.S. Open Cup and the CONCACAF Champions Cup.

"In America, I think if you name a few players who have kind of paved the way, he's one of those guys," said Kansas City assistant coach Chris Henderson, a former teammate at UCLA and on the national team.

"You could say he's like the past, the present and the future," Chicago defender C.J. Brown said. "We've got to thank him for all the stuff he's done for this league. He was the actual Beckham, the Blanco, of the USA at one point. He's amazing."