Cuban Olympic Team

[zequist]

Dunno if any of you have heard about this across the pond, but pool play for the CONCACAF Olympic qualifiers is going on right now, and after a 1-1 draw between Cuba and the US a few nights ago in Miami, five players from the Cuban U-23 team slipped out the back door of the hotel and disappeared, with two more following the next day. All of them are defecting to the US - which will be pretty easy to do because of policies still in place from the cold war regarding asylum for Cubans - and they've obviously played their last games in Cuban jerseys.

 

Between that incident and a red card suspension from the USA game, the Cubans had to start their next game against Honduras with only ten men on the field and no substitutes (and you thought Everton had a thin squad!). If there was any surprise in the result of that game, it was that Cuba *only* lost 2-0. It's easy to understand why the seven wanted to escape a repressive dictatorship at home, but at the same time I kinda feel bad for their teammates that they left behind...if they were good enough to play the US to a draw then they were probably good enough to at least have a puncher's chance at qualifying for the Olympics, and that's definitely gone now. Some writers are also complaining that the timing put the US at a disadvantage, since we were the only ones in the group who had to play against Cuba's full squad, but I'd argue that if we can't beat Honduras this weekend (which would make it a moot point), then we probably don't deserve an Olympic berth anyway.