Plan had one small defect
It was somewhere in Texas that the guagua broke down, the bus giving up the ghost on the outskirts of San Antonio.
For Jose Manuel Miranda, Yenier Bermudez and Yordany Alvarez, it was just another incident in their surreal journey toward freedom.
The three were among seven Cuban soccer players who defected to the U.S. in Tampa, Fla., last month during regional qualifying for the Beijing Olympics. Their hope was to establish a career in Major League Soccer.
When the call came that the Galaxy wanted to give them a two-week tryout, the trio jumped at the chance. The problem was, how to get from Miami to Los Angeles. No documents meant no flying; no money meant no car.
The guagua -- a term covering a variety of freelance transportation -- was the answer. But what a journey.
“It took four days,” Miranda said.
“It was total boredom,” Bermudez said.
Well, not entirely. Several strange fellow passengers, including one with numerous body piercings and tattoos, left them wide-eyed. It was not the sort of thing seen every day in Havana.
“Then the guagua broke down when we left San Antonio,” Miranda said. “We were stuck there for two hours. It was midnight.”
“And then Immigration stopped us,” Alvarez chipped in.
Ah, yes, Immigration. The last thing a trio of 20-somethings with little or no English and no legal identification had bargained for was seeing U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers boarding their bus.
But not to worry, soccer came to their rescue.
“When [the INS officer] asked for our papers, we just told him, ‘No, we’re the Cubans,’ ” Alvarez said
“We had the clippings from the newspaper articles that said who we were,” Miranda said.
“When we showed them the papers and photos, they began to ask about the game,” Alvarez said, referring to Cuba’s 1-1 tie with the U.S. in a game played just hours before they defected.
The INS officers wished the three luck and sent them on their way. It was just another night in Texas, not even as exciting as the evening when they fled the Cuban team’s Tampa hotel.
Miranda was the team’s goalkeeper. Bermudez was its captain and central defender. Alvarez was an attacking midfielder. All were starters. All decided long before coming to the U.S. that they would defect if given a chance.
Several other players had the same idea and one of them, Loanni Prieto, arranged for his Florida-based grandfather to meet them outside a side entrance to the hotel with a vehicle. When the moment came, they slipped away.
Their reasons were clear. “As the days go on, the fence closes in on you and it becomes harder for you to leave,” Bermudez said.
Said Miranda: “We had no doubts about what we wanted to do. We got up from our table at the restaurant. We walked fast. We were yelling at one another to hurry up, and then the door opened. Even if the grandfather had not been there, we would have run away. We would have run all through Tampa that night.”
They were still not free and clear.
“When we got to the car, the man that was driving turned right and was about to drive up past the front entrance to the hotel,” Miranda said. “We started screaming at him, ‘No, no, no. Go the other way.’ Once we were on the freeway and saw that we were on our way to West Palm Beach, that’s when we started to celebrate.”
On Friday, one chapter of their adventure came to an end. Galaxy Coach Ruud Gullit decided not to sign any of the three.
“We gave them a fair chance. It’s not that they are not good enough, but they’re not what we are looking to add to this team. I hope they will find [a place] somewhere else,” Gullit said.
Miranda, Bermudez and Alvarez already have. Chivas USA striker Maykel Galindo, who defected from Cuba in 2005, will visit them this weekend. Next week, they start a tryout with Chivas USA.
And this time they won’t need a guagua to get there.
--
TONIGHT
vs. Houston, 7:30, FSNW
Site -- Home Depot Center
Radio -- 1150, 1220 (Spanish)
Records -- Galaxy 1-2-0, Dynamo 0-1-2
Update -- The Galaxy acquired midfielder Joe Franchino from the New England Revolution for a 2009 second-round pick. Franchino played for the Galaxy in 1998-2000.
--
grahame.jones@latimes.com
