Cuban Football (Soccer) Guide
Sport in Cuba
Whilst baseball is Cuba’s national sport, football (or what Americans know as soccer and is known in Spanish as futbol), is becoming increasingly popular.
These days on the island, people seem more interested to play football rather than baseball, certainly one reason seeming to be the difference in cost between the games.
All you need of course is one football and you can literally play with little else, as highlighted in other parts of the Americas such as Brazil, where many people play bare-footed on the beaches.
With baseball on the other hand. without the right equipment (much of which is costly) it is not possible to play.
Baseball has thus become more distant from the economics of many Cubans.
The Popularity of Football (Soccer) in Cuba
The rising popularity of soccer in Cuba is also a result of the global reach of the game and teams such as FC Barcelona and Real Madrid have captured the imagination of Cubans.
Football has long been the national sport in the Americas including in Argentina, Brazil and within the Caribbean, several players have come out of Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The appeal of football has now reached the island of Cuba but there remains one key problem.
Within Cuba, sportspeople are not permitted to turn professional and this has resulted in the past, in some players choosing to defect abroad.
One of the most famous defectors is Osvaldo Alonso, a player who played in Washington State in the USA, for the Seattle Sounders FC, in the MLS (Major League Soccer) league.
Cuban National Team
The big problem in recent years for the Cuban national team is that the players do not get to play at a high enough standard on a domestic front, because the players get few chances to play with the world’s best players.
The national team though do play abroad and they compete in the qualification rounds for the World Cup.
Unfortunately, though, Cuba has either not qualified or not entered the finals, except for way back in 1938.
Cuba quite often plays international games against other Caribbean nations such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Haiti, both as friendlies and for international tournaments.
Domestic League
Cuba does have a national football (soccer) league and it is run and managed by the Cuban football association (Asociación de Fútbol de Cuba in Spanish).
The league, which is named the ‘Campeonato Nacional de Fútbol de Cuba’, has been running for over one hundred years and is made up of sixteen teams.
These teams are divided up into groups of four, with each group winner advancing to the later stages of what becomes a cup knockout tournament.
Players do not get paid and the standard overall cannot be compared in any way to what one would see in other national leagues, such as in England, Spain, Italy, or Brazil.
Nevertheless, attending a game if you are visiting Cuba, is a wonderful way to mix with the locals and to get a taste for the passion of the local people when they see and enjoy sport.
The league presently includes the Havana-based (and my favorite team) FC La Habana; FC Cienfuegos and FC Villa Clara.
Further Information
- El blog del Futbol Cubano is in Spanish, but you can still watch the videos on the site and get a taste for the football in Cuba.
- You can also find the latest Cuban scores and fixtures from the FIFA Cuba page.
