🇨🇺 Cuba referred to Concacaf's disciplinary committee: What's behind the decision?
Plus what the State Department told me about the situation
A Gold Cup preview is coming tomorrow, but I wanted to send a quick newsletter out on the Cuba situation. Premium subscribers got an update Monday laying out the full situation. You can go premium by clicking below:
Concacaf released a statement Thursday about the Gold Cup qualification match Cuba was forced to forfeit over the weekend. The confederation initially put Cuba’s absence from the match, scheduled for Saturday against French Guyana, down to issues related to travel in the COVID-19 era and problems with visas.
Those issues did play a role, Concacaf said today in a statement, but so too did “other administrative issues at the Cuba Football Association.”
The Disciplinary Committee now will investigate further and decide whether or not to take action.
That puts Concacaf’s position somewhat at contrast with the position of the Cuban government, which said in a statement to official publication JIT that, “The Cuban national team was not able to travel to Florida to participate in the Concacaf Gold Cup because the government of the United States did not grant the corresponding visas.”
However, multiple sources have told me that doesn’t quite paint the entire picture of what occurred as the Cuban delegation sought visas from the U.S. Embassy in Managua.
Those sources bring up the possibility that, in addition to players who already have the documents necessary to enter the U.S., other members of the Cuban delegation also were granted visas but that Cuban officials may have been unwilling to send a group that did not include the full traveling party.
A spokesperson from the United States State Department said it could not comment on individual cases but did provide a bit of information about how the process typically works.
“Visa records are confidential under U.S. law; therefore, we cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases. U.S. Embassies process visa applications in accordance with established processes and regulations. Applicants are informed when their visas may require additional processing time,” read a statement.
The spokesperson also noted that the U.S. Embassy in Havana currently has suspended most routine services because of the pandemic, though it “continues to provide limited non-immigrant visa services including for official and diplomatic travelers.”
Of course, the U.S. government long has treated Cuba and its residents in a different way than it has treated much of the rest of Latin America and the world, and with that history combined with the statement from the AFC and the difficulty Cuba’s baseball team had getting in for Olympic qualification earlier this year, it seemed the State Department may have been intentionally creating headaches for Cuba’s sports officials.
The spokesperson said, however, that this has nothing to do with any shift in the way the posture President Joe Biden’s administration is taking toward Cuba
“While we are currently reviewing policy toward Cuba, this matter is unrelated to the policy review,” the spokesperson said. “This Administration’s Cuba policy will be governed by two principles. First, support for democracy and human rights is at the core of our efforts through empowering the Cuban people to determine their own future. Second, Americans -- especially Cuban-Americans -- are the best ambassadors for freedom in Cuba.”
Whatever type of ambassador the Cuba men’s national team players would have been playing this tournament got lost in the shuffle, and it may never be crystal clear entirely who is at fault. The players are the ones who trained for more than a month away from home, hoping to represent their country.
But they were denied that chance by authorities, in one country or another (or both!), who were more interested in advancing their own interests than in facilitating the national team’s appearance at a sporting competition.