US football league seeing Cuba as Caribbean gateway

The North American Soccer League believes Tuesday's friendly between the New York Cosmos and Cuba is set to usher in a new era of closer sporting ties between the two Cold War rivals.

The Cosmos will become the first professional American sports team to play in the Communist-ruled island since 1999 on Tuesday when they face the Cuban national team in Havana.

The match is the most significant sporting event involving the two nations since President Barack Obama and counterpart Raul Castro announced a historic effort to bury five decades of antagonism last December.

The NASL, regarded as the de facto second tier of football in the United States after Major League Soccer, see Tuesday's game as an opportunity to establish a beachhead in Cuba and the Caribbean.

"For us as a league it's probably most important that we're developing a new relationship," NASL commissioner Bill Peterson said Monday.

"The Caribbean area is very important to our league -- we had 25 players from the Caribbean playing in our league last year and we look forward to the day when there's a player from Cuba in our league."

Peterson said the NASL planned to forge closer working links with Cuban football over a range of areas.

"We will work with our hosts to explore all the key areas that you would expect us to explore -- whether it's players in our league, sharing coaches between Cuba and our league, player development, officiating," Peterson said.

- 'Everything on table' -

"Everything can be on the table, but we'll take it one step at a time and will manage the relationship carefully."

That could even include the hitherto unthinkable prospect of establishing a Cuban-based NASL franchise at some point in the distant future.

"It's a very good question. It's impossible to answer today but with the change in relationship between the two countries and our presence here in the Caribbean I've learned never to say never."

Cosmos coach Giovanni Savarese believes games like Tuesday's fixture at the ramshackle Pedro Marrero Stadium could become a regular occurrence in future as relations between Cuba and the United States improve.

"It definitely feels that it could be the beginning of something," Savarese said after a training session on Monday. "More occasions like this can only help understanding and to unite people through sport.

But the prospect of a Cuban professional team playing in an US-based league remains wildly unlikely however in a country where baseball remains the most popular sport and the national soccer team is languishing in 109th spot in the FIFA rankings, sandwiched between Bahrain and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Nevertheless, Brazil and former New York Cosmos legend Pele was on hand Tuesday to sprinkle stardust and words of encouragement for Cuban football at a pre-match press conference.

"A long time ago the United States started to play football and then they qualified for the World Cup," the three-time World Cup winner said.

"I think Cuba could be the same. Very soon they will have a team in the World Cup, no doubt."
Source: AFP