Cuban U-23s Take a Wicked Defection

By: Laurie | March 12th, 2008

Pop quiz: The five young men currently missing from the Cuban U-23 team have

A) found a really rockin’ party and lost track of time, or
B) defected to the US.

Smart money would be on B.

TAMPA, Fla. — Five members of the Cuban Under 23 national soccer team left their hotel Tuesday night and are unaccounted for, raising the possibility they may be trying to defect.

The players were discovered to have left the team hotel hours after earning a 1-1 draw with the United States in the Pre-Olympic tournament.

“Jose Manuel Miranda, Erlys Garcia Baro, Yenier Bermudez, Yordany Alvarez and Loanni Prieto left the hotel”, Raul Gonzalez, coach of the Cuban national team, told ESPN reporter Fernando Palomo.

If you watched the game last night between Cuba and the US, you’ll remember Miranda as the guy who repeatedly thwarted the US in their dreams of walking away with all three points. Instead the US was held to a 1-1 draw, and Miranda was largely responsible. And Bermudez was the team captain.

Florida has a very large Cuban community, many of whom probably would have been thrilled to give the Cuban players a little hand in any defection attempt. There had been speculation before the tournament as to whether or not all of the players who made the flight in would also be making the flight out. This is particularly true since the Cuban soccer team has a history of defections from tournaments on US soil. Perhaps the most well-known successful defector is Chivas USA striker Maykel Galindo, who defected in Seattle back in 2005 during the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

The biggest downside to this story is what it does to the rest of the Cuban team, who were off to a promising start with that unexpected 1-1 draw. If the players have, in fact, defected, this leaves only thirteen players with the squad. And one of them got sent off in yesterday’s game on a very iffy second yellow, so he’s currently suspended.

The hopelessness of the situation is probably almost enough to make the other players defect.

I don’t have anything to say about the political implications of this incident, but on behalf of soccer fans in the US, I would like to say to these young men: