Four soccer players, Roberney Caballero, Denilson Milanés, Neisser Sandó and Jassael Herrera, left the Cuban team that is participating in the Gold Cup in the United States.
The journalist Francys Romero, the most reliable source when it comes to escapes by Cuban athletes, confirmed the news.
Caballero, 28, Sandó, 24, and Milanés and Herrera, both 20, escaped from the delegation as soon as they reached Miami from the island and did not participate in Tuesday’s match, in which Cuba debuted with a 1-0 defeat against the Guatemalan team at the DVR-PNK stadium in Fort Lauderdale.
According to experts consulted by Romero, the four have the potential to play as professionals, either in Major League Soccer in the United States or in other leagues in the region.
With these four leaks, there are already 33 Cuban athletes who have decided to leave delegations to carve out a path for themselves, without ties to the regime’s National Sports Institute (INDER).
The most recent ten occurred in the same month of June, since the four soccer players are joined by the discus thrower Denia Caballero, world champion in 2015 and Olympic bronze medalist in 2016, the rifle shooter Mitchell Orellana and the players of the women’s team of handball Arisleydi Márquez, Yudisaday Rodríguez, Melisa Arias and Geidy Maceo, who decided to stay in Paris, where they were doing a training base for the Central American and Caribbean Games that are being held in San Salvador.
The figure of 33 leaks is already more than half of the 62 that were registered in the entire year 2022.
