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Soccer Struggles to Gain a Foothold in Cuba, Where Baseball Is King
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A young American squad was sent here for the 1991 Pan-American Games and beat Cuba, 2-1, en route to the championship.
The national teams will meet again Oct. 11 at RFK Stadium.
"To beat the United States is going to be difficult," Cuba Coach Reinhold Fanz told Granma, "but not impossible. We are going to need the support of all the public on Saturday."
Fanz, 54, was recruited two years ago from his native Germany, where he enjoyed a 10-year career as a midfielder before turning to coaching. In Cuba, he does not have much to work with. Every national team player competes domestically in a ragtag league and the program has been decimated by defections. To prepare for the qualifiers, Fanz took the team to Germany for a series of exhibitions and experienced mixed results.
For every step forward Cuba has taken on the field in recent years, the departure of players has been a step back.
Rey Ángel Martínez and Alberto Delgado were the first to leave, during the 2002 Gold Cup in Los Angeles. Both ended up playing for MLS's Colorado Rapids and then in USL1, the second tier of American pro soccer.
After defections by Galindo in Seattle in 2005 and two others in Houston last year, seven players from the under-23 national team walked away from their hotel in Tampa last spring during the Olympic qualifying tournament and did not return. Despite having only 10 eligible players for a game against Honduras, the Cubans decided to play on and kept the game scoreless into the second half before enduring a 2-0 loss.
Players leave Cuba "because they want to make something out of their lives," said Galindo, one of MLS's top forwards last year with 12 goals and five assists but sidelined much of this season with injuries. "They are in search of the dream of playing soccer at a professional level and they know that Cuba will not offer them that."
