The senior men’s team is the reflection of soccer in each country. The image of soccer in any nation depends on its results. I would dare to say that in each federation the strategy to follow is designed so that everything contributes to the senior team. This is an end and not a means.
It is a reality that the level of involvement of the fans even depends on the state of the senior men’s team. It seems that if the team is doing well, the fans are happy even if everything else is a disaster. And, on the contrary, when things go wrong, it seems that everything is, even if in other disciplines, branches, or categories of the same sports results are obtained.
This is what seems to be happening in Cuban soccer. Just three years ago, this sport managed to add a considerable number of fans with the start of the call for emigrated soccer players. However, the tendency to annul the project has begun to generate boredom in the Cuban soccer family. And the most recent call-up of the national team for the CONCACAF Nations League continued to open the wound.
Although the return of the star Onel Hernández aroused some attention, the focus of the fans was on the important absences of Luis Paradela, Willian Pozo, and Cavafe, as well as on the excessive presence of players who are clearly not at the level of a senior national team. For one reason or another, it is difficult for us to settle a call-up with all our best elements.
In a note published in JIT, the Cuban Soccer Association clarifies that the absence of Paradela and Cavafe is due to personal situations presented by both. In the case of the Spanish-Cuban center, according to the information that OnCuba was able to access, it would have been the player himself who informed the coaching staff that he was not in a competitive rhythm, since he has been a free agent for the last two months. This is perfectly understandable.
However, the loss of the defender is especially sensitive, as it continues to weaken an area of the field that has been quite damaged in recent months with the serious injury of Yosel Piedra and the expulsion of Modesto Méndez and Jorge Luis Corrales due to differences with the coach.
The fact that Willian Pozo was not called up due to a technical decision has caused unease in a considerable sector of the island’s sports fans and journalists.
And it is no wonder. Although the start of the season had not been happy for the Grorud IL winger in Norwegian soccer, as the days have gone by he has gradually taken over a place in his team’s starting lineup, scoring goals, providing assists and being one of the Cuban soccer players who are in the best form and rhythm at the moment.
If we take into account that Luis Paradela, also a winger and a regular in coach Yunielys Castillo’s plans, will not be there, it becomes more difficult to understand the criteria used to leave the skilled Havana player out of a call-up with such low standards of inclusion.
Faithful to the trends that have characterized his time as coach of the Cuban senior team, Castillo included up to eight players from the last U-20 team, which also under his command qualified for the World Cup in the category in the Pre-World Cup held in Mexico less than a month ago.
During the tournament, in a press conference, the coach from Sancti Spíritus acknowledged having used the call-ups from the senior team to train his pupils from the U-20 team, a practice that apparently will not end after achieving the World Cup objective.
The strategy, which undoubtedly had a positive influence on the result of the U-20, on the other hand directly goes against the objectives of the senior team, since the great majority of these players do not yet have the level for the competitive rigor of such a team.
It is an unfavorable decision in every sense. For the forced inclusion of these young players, much more trained players with more experience must be sacrificed. This lowers the quality standards of the team and reduces the depth of the squad.
If the method itself is questionable, doing so right in the competitive cycle in which we are facing the most accessible World Cup qualifiers in history, flirts with negligence. It would not be surprising if these inventions are generating unrest within a locker room that also has objectives and wants to compete for them.
Performing in the U-20 team does not ensure the same performance in the senior team, where players must face a much more demanding level, with more technically and tactically developed rivals.
Nor were the call-ups of the young Diego Catasus and Reydel Sánchez, who play in less competitive divisions in Italian and Spanish soccer, respectively, very well received by the fans.
If we look at the whole picture, the present is being sacrificed for the future, precisely in a sport in which the greatest opportunity in our history is now, and is unlikely to be repeated. The objectives of the senior team are being sacrificed to strengthen the U-20 team.
The visible face of a country’s soccer is the senior one. It is the results of this that determine the level of involvement of the fans. Moving away from that path has considerably dissipated the growing passion for Cuban soccer that began to spread on the island with the call of the legionaries in 2021.
It is in the hands of Yunielys Castillo and the Cuban Soccer Association to get the river back on its course; to reorient the helm of our soccer ship and return to traditional priorities. It is not complicated. It is simply a matter of will.
