BALTIMORE – To say that Cuba entered Saturday evening’s CONCACAF quarterfinal against the United States as underdogs is a bit of an understatement.
The Cubans, already among the weaker teams to have qualified for the tournament to begin with, were dealt another blow earlier this week when several of their players defected, most notably starting striker Ariel Martinez. A Univision report described the gut-wrenching nature of his departure; just hours after his side’s shock victory over Guatemala, the forward left the team bus in tears, saying goodbye to his coach and teammates before “running off into the darkness.”
It sounds like the first half of a movie, one where the underdog very often comes out on top. Giants are vanquished. Trophies are lifted. The crowd, usually a hostile one, eventually warms to the scrappy upstarts and roots them on to victory.
But Saturday’s quarterfinal was no movie. And in real life, things very rarely go the way of the underdog. The Cubans were thrashed by the USA, who used a Clint Dempsey hat trick and a trio of other contributors to hand the Cubans a 6-0 defeat, the largest margin of victory ever for a US team at the Gold Cup.
"We went up against a very high-level team, and we knew that,” Cuba head coach Raul Gonzalez told the media assembled after the match. "They were tough to deal with, they were just rolling over us. We knew we had to be careful, that we had to prepare carefully for this match, that goals early on could make things difficult for us. When they score in the fourth minute – from there, that’s where it all came undone for us, and it didn’t end up being a very competitive match.”
The Cubans never really got a chance to find their footing on Saturday; Dempsey’s first goal, a fourth-minute header, pretty much sealed the deal. Cuba settled for a single shot on goal, an utterly harmless chip a few minutes after the USMNT opener.
You can’t help but wonder – would the result have been any different had the Cubans had a full-strength side? What, exactly, is the emotional toll of losing so many players to defection nearly every time Los Leones Del Caribe play in the US? After the match, Gonzalez didn’t have much to say about the defections – he hasn’t all week – insisting that he concerns himself only with the players in front of him at any given moment.
"I think we have what we have here. The players that aren’t here anymore, they don’t mean anything to us because they’ve chosen their own path; they’re no longer here. With the players that we have I think we could’ve probably done better than we did today, but the team is tired. It’s our fourth game of the tournament, fourth game traveling around to different venues and I think the team is pretty wiped out.”
When pressed a bit more to elaborate, Gonzalez seemed vexed. It’s become a recurring theme at most soccer-related press conferences the island nation holds – while some reporters want to dig into matters on the field, many, understandably, seem more interested in discussing the defections and the ongoing diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba.
"Every day I get asked this question,” Gonzalez said. "I’m a happy man, I’m a soccer man. How long are we going to talk about this? Over and over again, you guys keep asking me the same question.
"Don’t get mad, please, but you’re just going to get the same answer."
