When its campaign to qualify for the 2022 World Cup begins
this week, Cuba will use an approach it has not tried in years: fielding many
of its best eligible players.
اضافة اعلان
For years, only Cuban players who had contracts with INDER,
the country’s governing body for sports, were selected to represent the national
team. This month, that will change. Cuba has called in several players who are
based abroad — and outside the official Cuban sports system — to play in a set
of World Cup qualification matches.
That means potential national team debuts for Norwich City
wing Onel Hernández, Spain-based defender Carlos Vázquez Fernández and San
Marino-based forward Joel Apezteguía. It also means a return to the national
team after six years away for defender Jorge Luis Corrales.
“I didn’t know if I should shout or laugh, because there are
a lot of conflicting feelings,” said Corrales, who plays in a second-tier
league in the United States. “The images of many years playing with the
national team and all the great moments went through my mind. I think once
again participating in those moments will be one of the best experiences I’ve
had since arriving here to the United States.”
To outside observers, the overseas-based players fall into a
category that is difficult to distinguish from Cubans who walked away from
national teams during tournaments abroad or defected elsewhere. But there is an
important distinction that makes all the difference to Cuban officials: All of
them either left the island with their parents as children or were given
permission by the government to go abroad.
Corrales, for example, was allowed to visit his father in
Miami after the 2015 Gold Cup, a major regional championship, and decided to
stay after he was granted a five-year visa. He has since played for several
teams in Major League Soccer and the United Soccer League Championship (USL),
the second division in the United States, including for his current employer,
FC Tulsa.
Apezteguía is hoping to make his national team debut at age
37. He played in Cuba until he was 24 before leaving to help his father run a
bar and restaurant in Spain. After years of laboring in Europe’s smaller
leagues (Moldova, Albania and his current home in San Marino are highlights)
and hoping to be noticed by Cuban football officials, the call finally came.
Hernández, 28, left Cuba when he was a child to move to
Germany. He started his professional career in the German second division
before moving to Norwich City, which he helped earn promotion to the Premier
League in 2019. That summer, he became the first Cuban to play in the Premier
League. A few months later, in a match against Manchester United, he became the
first Cuban to score a goal in it.
Hernández had expressed interest in representing his country
of birth in the past, even accepting an invitation to train with the national
team, but suiting up in an official game still seemed impossible until this
month.
Vázquez Fernández, a 21-year-old known as CaVaFe, left for
Spain with his parents when he was 3. He developed his football game there,
rising through Atlético Madrid’s academy and training with the first team at
times. He has expressed his desire to wear the Cuba jersey for years but had no
timeline in mind.
“I knew this first call-up was going to come,” he said.
“What I didn’t know if it was going to be sooner or later, in 2028, 2025, 2021,
but I knew it was going to happen. I’ve always been positive.”
What none of the players is sure about, though, is why the
calls are coming now.
Hernández has had regular contact with Cuba’s manager, Pablo
Elier Sánchez, including video chats to get up to speed on the team’s tactics.
He and the other players said they felt Sánchez and a handful of other
officials had facilitated their call-ups by working for several years to
convince football and government officials to bring them into the fold.
Sánchez addressed the new faces in a brief airport interview
upon arrival in Guatemala Sunday, saying they would “undoubtedly” strengthen
his team.
“They’re players who are playing in important leagues,
first-class leagues in the world,” he said. “They’re going to bring a lot when
it comes to the results the team can get.”
Cuba has offered no official explanation for its sudden
openness to players from outside the national sports system, or if the success
of these initial steps might usher in an openness to a prospect that has to
date been unthinkable: reinforcing Cuban sports teams with defectors who
represent the elite of the Cuban sporting diaspora, not just football players
like Osvaldo Alonso and Maikel Chang but potentially baseball stars like José
Abreu and Yuli Gurriel.
Messages left with Sánchez, federation officials and INDER
were not returned.
The players are hoping they can make a difference.
Apezteguía said it had been difficult to watch Cuba’s national team, ranked 180
of 210 FIFA members, and know he could raise its level of play.
“We have so many kids in Cuba that love football, and they
want to live the dream that I lived,” Hernández said.
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