Goal !

At the Olympic qualifying games in West Palm Beach, Florida five soccer players and an assistant coach belonging to Cubans national soccer team became refugees in the blink of an eye. The players saw this as an opportunity to make their dreams of becoming professional soccer players come true. On Tuesday night on of the players had his grandfather pick him and his teammates up and bring them off in the night. This had been the plan of several of the players for some months. “Although the defection of Cuban athletes from international competitions is not uncommon, the sudden departure of seven players and an assistant coach at a qualifying tournament for the Olympic represented a stunning rebuke to the Cuban government.” Cuban’s communist youth union newspaper Juventud Rebelde called the defectors dishonorable in its story “Low Blow for Cuban Soccer.” Because of the lost of several of its players including the goal keeper, captain, three defenders, and midfielder, Cuba lost to Honduras 2-0 after its tie with the U.S. (while all the players were present). They now face close elimination as they prepare for Panama.

The dreams for the boys to become professional athletes, where in the U.S. they could average $85,000 annually compared to $8 a week in Cuba, has taken a halt. Luiz Muzzi, the general manager of Miami F.C., a professional team in the United Soccer Leagues’ First Division, was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying he planned to hold a tryout for the players. But Friday afternoon, he told The New York Times that he would not be doing so. “It is a political situation. They’re not legal in the country yet and we’re against any athlete leaving in the middle of a national competition. Right now our position is that we can’t offer them anything.” Miami F.C. is owned by Traffic Sports, a Brazilian company that organizes soccer events like Copa América and qualifying games for the World Cup. According to their lawyer they plan to apply for a political asylum which under the U.S. policy they would receive because they entered to country on legal terms. Nothing has been heard from the assistant coach at the moment.