About: http://data.cimple.eu/news-article/fe87dfb22f65ddb7919bd9280851ac37787f700c15e54976dc73996a     Goto   Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink

An Entity of Type : schema:NewsArticle, within Data Space : data.cimple.eu associated with source document(s)

AttributesValues
rdf:type
schema:articleBody
  • Cuba called up Norwich City forward Onel Hernandez and 10 other foreign-based players on Tuesday in a historic first for the island nation ahead of World Cup qualifiers against Guatemala and Curacao. Professional sport was barred under former Cuban leader Fidel Castro from 1961 to 2016 and footballers could not sign full-time contracts with foreign teams unless they defected. It was a similar story in all sports. Iconic boxers such as three-time Olympic champions Felix Savon and Teofilo Stevenson never got to turn professional, while other Games gold medalists such as Odlanier Solis and Guillermo Rigondeaux defected in order to pursue a professional boxing career. Hernandez, 28, emigrated to Germany when he was six and in 2010 he represented the European country at under-18 level. Last season he became the first Cuban to play in the English Premier League. In 2019 he told The Guardian newspaper he dreamed of being able to one day represent Cuba, and that is about to come true. The country's football association had laid the foundations for the historic move in November when for the first time it registered five players plying their trade abroad. Jorge Luis Corrales of Canada's Montreal Impact, Carlos Vazquez of Alcorcon in Spain, Joel Apezteguia from Tre Fiori in San Marino and Marcel Hernandez of Alajuelense in Costa Rica were the others registered then. The other players called up to a 26-man squad for the matches against Guatemala on March 24 and Curacao four days later, play in Brazil, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Honduras. The decision had come after calls from fans and players alike to end the ban on foreign-based players in the wake of defections and poor results. Cuba are taking part in the first qualifying round in the CONCACAF region that incorporates the Caribbean and North and Central America. Both matches this month will be played in Guatemala, after which Cuba will face further qualifying matches in June against the British Virgin Islands and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Cuba have only played in one World Cup before, in 1938 in France. They qualified when all other teams from their Americas qualifying group pulled out. At the finals themselves, Cuba beat Romania after a replay but were then hammered 8-0 by Sweden. The Qatar World Cup will run from November 21 to December 18, 2022. bur/cb/ma/bc/iwd
schema:headline
  • Cuba calls up foreign-based players for first time
schema:mentions
schema:author
schema:datePublished
http://data.cimple...sPoliticalLeaning
http://data.cimple...logy#hasSentiment
http://data.cimple...readability_score
http://data.cimple...tology#hasEmotion
Faceted Search & Find service v1.16.115 as of Oct 09 2023


Alternative Linked Data Documents: ODE     Content Formats:   [cxml] [csv]     RDF   [text] [turtle] [ld+json] [rdf+json] [rdf+xml]     ODATA   [atom+xml] [odata+json]     Microdata   [microdata+json] [html]    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3238 as of Jul 16 2024, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-musl), Single-Server Edition (126 GB total memory, 5 GB memory in use)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2025 OpenLink Software