Two players leave the Cuban futsal team in Costa Rica

Two Cuban soccer players left the national team Indoor football during their stay in Costa Rica, a country in which they disputed a preparation limit.

"Players Ernesto Duanes and Bárbaro Shelier “They left the Cuban Futsal Team that was participating in a training session in Costa Rica,” he revealed this Sunday in his social networks the sports journalist Francys Romero.

According to Romero's sources, Bárbaro Shelier from Havana would have left the team on Friday, while Ernesto Duanes from Ciego de Avila – who had also been part of Cuba's 11-a-side soccer teams – did so this Sunday, just when the team arrived at the airport to travel from return to Cuba.

As Romero highlighted in his Facebook post, “With these two departures there are already 67 Cuban athletes who have abandoned delegations or contracts in 2023”.

In July of last year, three Cuban futsal players left the official delegation in the UNCAF FIFA Forward Under-20 Futsal tournament held in Guatemala.

Players Mario Planchet, Early Christian and Leonardo Acevedo They did not show up for the semifinal game that Cuba lost to Nicaragua last Friday, according to the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre.

According to the information, the three young people had escaped a couple of days before the Cuba-Nicaragua match, without their whereabouts being known. Finally, Cuba finished in fourth place in the Central American tournament, in which Nicaragua was proclaimed champion and Costa Rica was second.

The doctor and member of the delegation confirmed the abandonment of the three athletes. “With all this, plus the betrayal of 3 of our players, including the best player on the team, these young people knew how to prevail and fight day after day for their team, for Cuba,” he declared in a Facebook post.

Although the Cuban state sports structure has tried to articulate strategies to stop the flight of athletes - such as, for example, the management of professional contracts in other countries -, every year dozens of Cuban athletes request the withdrawal of the high-performance system or leave official delegations. , trying to achieve better opportunities for the development of their careers.

This weekend it was known that Cuban researcher Elizabeth Reyes Entenza He joined the extensive list of athletes from the island who leave the Cuban delegation in international events, after their escape this week during the World Youth Championship, in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The 2022 junior world runner-up did not compete on November 22 at the Code Paradero Sports Center, as days after arriving in Mexico she escaped from the team.

Days before, Cuban blind swimmer Yunerki Ortega Ponce left the national delegation at the Santiago 2023 Parapan American Games, in Chile. The athlete disappeared from the Pan American Village, where he left taking all his personal belongings.

Before, during the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, held in Chile, 12 participating Cuban athletes requested refuge in that southern country.

The Chilean government detailed that of the 412 members of the Cuban delegation that arrived in Santiago, 391 left the country and 21 remained in Chilean territory. Of that number, only the 12 previously mentioned have requested some type of protection in the country.