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2 More Cuban Soccer Players Abandon Team In Tampa

Tribune photos by BILL WARD

Yendry Diaz, left, and Eder Roldan practiced with the Cuban team yesterday at the University of South Florida soccer stadium.

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By BILL WARD and KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 13, 2008

Updated: 03/13/2008 03:10 pm

TAMPA - Two more members of Cuba's under-23 men's national team have left the team, according to ESPN Deportes.

Defender Yendry Diaz and midfielder Eder Roldan slipped out of the team hotel after Wednesday's training session at the University of South Florida, the organization reports.

Five players went missing from their Tampa hotel late Tuesday after playing a match at Raymond James Stadium, said their coach, Raul Gonzalez.

The five players, four of them starters, headed to South Florida after they ran to a waiting car outside the Doubletree Hotel on West Cypress Street. They are expected to seek asylum in the United States and continue their soccer careers in professional leagues here.

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, in effect since 1966, any Cuban who arrives in the United States automatically is eligible for expedited legal permanent resident status and then U.S. citizenship.

The car took them to Lake Worth, just south of West Palm Beach, where on Wednesday they contacted a lawyer, bought a mobile telephone and had a Cuban meal, according to a Miami Herald report.

"We're fine, calm, feeling hopeful about our new lives," team captain Yenier Bermudez told The Miami Herald by phone Wednesday. "We knew when we got to the United States what our plan was. It's something the five of us talked about a lot, so we were ready when the time came."

The Herald report states that the players devised the plan in Cuba but told no one, including family.

America TeVe Channel 41, a Spanish-language TV station in Miami, interviewed all five players Wednesday at a home in West Palm Beach, where the TV stations said the five were spending time with friends.

The talk was decidedly nonpolitical:

"My dream was always to play in the MLS," one of the players told the reporter, speaking of Major League Soccer, the top division of professional soccer in the United States.

The Miami TV reporter asked them why they weren't making political statements as part of their plans to defect to the United States. "My motive isn't political," player Erlys Garcia Baro said. "My objective is to play soccer here."

The TV reporter said none of the players has family living in the United States. He ended his piece by asking for financial donations to help them start their lives here.

Tampa lawyer Ralph Fernandez, a Cuban-American experienced in exile issues, said rumors of the players' potential defections circulated Tuesday night.

"It was so out there," Fernandez said. "I was surprised the Cubans didn't yank the team last night.

"When something like this is taking place, a lot of times the Cuban team reacts by packing everybody up and going home."

In addition to Garcia Baro and Bermudez, the first five players to defect, all ages 21 and 22, include starting goalkeeper Jose Manuel Miranda, Yordany Alvarez and Loanni Prieto, who, although not a starter for the U.S. game, played as a substitute most of the second half.

"With or without those five, we came here to qualify for the Beijing Olympics and we're going after that tomorrow," Cuban Soccer Federation President Luis Hernandez said after the team's brief training session Wednesday at the University of South Florida.

The departure of the seven players leaves Cuba with 11, and one of them, Roberto Linares, is ineligible to play tonight's game because of the red card he received in Tuesday's 1-1 tie with the United States.

According to International Federation of Association Football, soccer's governing body, a match can start with a minimum of seven players. If a player is sent off (for a red card or two yellow cards) and the team is reduced to six players, the match would be abandoned by the referee and play would end.

However, if a team has fewer than seven players because one or more players deliberately leave the field or are injured, the referee is not obliged to stop the match.

In such cases, the referee should not allow the match to resume after the ball has gone out of play if a team does not have the minimum number of seven players.

As of 2:30 U.S. Soccer officials said the Cuba-Honduras match was still scheduled to be played at RJS at 5 p.m.

The Cuban under-23 team is in Tampa, along with teams from the United States, Honduras and Panama, for the final round of qualifying of the Beijing Olympic Games.

The top two teams from the group advance to the semifinals next week in Nashville, Tenn.

The U.S. team played a full-strength Cuban team, but Honduras, which leads the group standings with three points, and fourth-place Panama now will face a Cuban team rocked by the loss of key players.

U.S. Soccer officials said they likely would defer any decision to the tournament's governing body, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. The situation is not unprecedented: Two Cuban players defected at the 2002 Gold Cup soccer tournament in Los Angeles, and two Cuban players defected at the 2006 Gold Cup in Houston.

Tribune reporters Bill Ward and Ray Reyes, Centro Mi Diario reporter Vanessa Vazquez and News Channel 8 reporters Katie Coronado and Peter Bernard contributed to this report.

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