Cuba national football team

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 5th of June 1938, the Cuba national football team walked onto the pitch at the Stade du T.O.E.C. in Toulouse, France, and into history. No Caribbean team had ever played a World Cup finals match before. Their opponents, Romania, were appearing in their third finals. Cuba were appearing in their first. What followed was ninety minutes of chaos, two replays, a quarter-final against Sweden, and one of the most extraordinary runs any underdog has produced at football's biggest stage. How did Cuba get there? And why, despite occasional flashes of promise over the following decades, have they never returned?

• 2. A Team Takes Shape

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  Cuba played its very first international match on the 16th of March 1930, at the Central American and Caribbean Games held in Havana. The opponent was Jamaica, then still a British colony, and Cuba won 3-1. Four days later, Cuba routed Honduras 7-0. That early team was managed by José Tapia, who would remain in charge through the 1938 World Cup campaign, a tenure stretching nearly a decade across two separate spells.

  The Football Association of Cuba had been founded in 1924, and Cuba joined FIFA in 1932. Those early years were spent building competitive experience. Cuba's first World Cup qualification campaign came for the 1934 tournament in Italy, where they were placed in Group 11 alongside Haiti, Mexico, and the United States. The format was a series of best-of-three matches, beginning with a two-leg series against Haiti. Those matches were played at Parc Leconte in Port-au-Prince, and Cuba won the three-game series, with Mario Lopez and Hector Socorro as the key contributors. Lopez scored from a penalty in the opener and equalised in the final minute of the second match to force the tie.

  In the second round against Mexico at Parque Necaxa in Mexico City, Cuba ran into a player who made their progress impossible. Dionisio Mejia scored a hat-trick in the first game, putting Mexico up 3-0 before Cuba pulled it back to 3-2. Mejia struck again the following week as Mexico won 5-0, and Cuba's qualification bid ended there. Cuba would not reach the 1934 finals, but the campaign gave the team its first meaningful test at the qualifying level.

• 3. The 1938 World Cup

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  France 1938 arrived almost by accident for Cuba. The decision to hold the tournament in Europe again, rather than returning to South America, prompted every South American nation except Brazil to withdraw. Every CONCACAF nation except Cuba also withdrew. Both Cuba and Brazil qualified by default. The tournament was a straight knockout of sixteen nations.

  Cuba's first match, on the 5th of June, against Romania at the Stade du T.O.E.C. in Toulouse, produced one of the great unscripted finishes of the era. Romania took the lead through Silviu Bindea after 35 minutes. Hector Socorro equalised nine minutes later. With three minutes left, Tomás Fernández put Cuba ahead. Within a minute, Iuliu Baratky levelled for Romania and forced extra time. Romania went ahead again when Ștefan Dobay scored on 105 minutes. Then, with three minutes of extra time remaining, Juan Tuñas pulled Cuba level at 3-3. No winner, and a replay was scheduled.

  The replay, four days later at the same stadium, again involved Dobay, who put Romania 1-0 up by half-time with a 35th-minute goal. Socorro equalised in the 51st minute of the second half. Six minutes after that, Carlos Oliviera scored the decisive goal and Cuba won 2-1. They became the first Caribbean team to advance beyond the first round of a World Cup.

  The quarter-final on the 12th of June, at Stade du Fort Carre in Antibes, ended Cuba's run against Sweden in brutal fashion. Sweden won 8-0. Tore Keller and Gustav Wetterström each scored hat-tricks. The result stands as Cuba's heaviest World Cup defeat and the margin has never been surpassed in that tournament's knockout stages. Cuba finished seventh overall, a result that stands as their best at the competition.

• 4. Postwar Qualification and Cold War Gaps

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  The NAFC Championship of 1949 doubled as CONCACAF's qualification group for the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. Cuba, the United States, and Mexico played each other twice in a tournament held in Mexico City in September of that year. The top two sides would qualify. Cuba finished third and missed out. Their only point came from a 1-1 draw against the United States on the 14th of September.

  For decades after, Cuba's participation in World Cup qualification was irregular. They did not compete in qualifying again until 1966, by which time the country was already under Castro's government. They returned for 1978 qualifying but the most significant near-miss of the Cold War era came in 1982. Cuba reached the final round of qualifying and finished only two points short of reaching the 1982 World Cup. It remains one of the closest the team has come to returning to the finals in the post-1938 era.

  At the 1971 CONCACAF Championship, Cuba had earlier reached their best regional finish, placing fourth. And in 1947, as hosts of the NAFC Championship, they finished runners-up. Cuba were founding members of CONCACAF in 1961, having previously been members of the NAFC from 1946 to 1955 and the CCCF from 1955 to 1961, the two predecessor confederations. That institutional continuity stood in contrast to the on-pitch gaps that political circumstance helped produce.

• 5. Modern Results and Near-Misses

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  Cuba reached the quarter-finals of the 2003 Gold Cup, defeating Canada 2-0 in the group stage before falling to the United States. That same period saw them come agonisingly close in World Cup qualifying: during the 2006 qualifiers they faced Costa Rica and were eliminated only on away goals after drawing 2-2 in Havana and 1-1 in Costa Rica.

  The 2010 qualifying cycle brought a different kind of drama. Cuba drew 3-3 with Antigua and Barbuda before winning 4-1 in Pedro Marreo to advance to the semi-final round, where they were grouped with the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guatemala. Their sole victory was a 2-1 result against Guatemala, with the goal scored by Aliannis Urgellés. Cuba finished fourth.

  For the 2014 World Cup, Cuba qualified directly to the third round as one of the six highest-ranked CONCACAF teams and were placed in Group C with Honduras, Panama, and Canada. The campaign ended with one draw and five defeats. Their single goal across the entire qualifying campaign came from Alberto Gomes against Panama in the group's final game. Cuba have reached the Gold Cup quarter-finals three times under that format, in 2003, 2013, and 2015. They won the Caribbean Cup in 2012, their first title in that competition. The 1930 Central American and Caribbean Games gold medal, won on home soil in Havana, remains the team's oldest international honour.

• 6. Defection as a Constant

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  During the 2002 Gold Cup in Los Angeles, two Cuban players, Rey Ángel Martínez and Alberto Delgado, chose to stay in the United States rather than return home with the squad. They were not the last. Striker Maykel Galindo did the same during the 2005 Gold Cup. Osvaldo Alonso and Lester More departed during the 2007 Gold Cup.

  The year 2008 saw defections across two separate tournaments. In March, seven members of the under-23 squad defected during the CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying tournament while the team was based in Tampa, Florida. Among them were Yeniel Bermúdez, Yordany Álvarez, and Yendry Díaz. In October of the same year, two days before a World Cup qualifier against the United States, Reynier Alcántara and Pedro Faife left the team's hotel near Washington, D.C.

  Yosniel Mesa defected during the 2011 Gold Cup while the team was in Charlotte, North Carolina. During the 2015 Gold Cup, forward Keiler García left before the team's opening match against Mexico in Chicago. In September 2019, five players including Yordan Santa Cruz, Andy Baquero, David Urgelles, Orlendis Benítez, and Alejandro Portal defected during the CONCACAF Nations League while on a trip to Canada.

  At the 2023 Gold Cup, four players, Roberney Caballero, Denilson Milanés, Neisser Sandó, and Jassael Herrera, defected while the squad was preparing to travel from Miami to Houston. A fifth player, Sandy Sánchez, followed after the final group stage match against Canada, with a member of the medical staff reportedly doing the same. Lester More, who defected in 2007, went on to become Cuba's all-time top scorer with 30 goals in 62 caps. His departure is a reminder that defection has cost the national team some of its most capable players over multiple generations.

• 7. Records and Continuity

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  Yénier Márquez holds the record for most appearances for Cuba with 126 caps, accumulated between 2000 and 2015. Odelín Molina is second on 123 caps across a career from 1996 to 2013. Lester More tops the scoring charts with 30 goals in 62 appearances over a career from 1995 to 2007, followed by Lázaro Darcourt with 21 goals in 73 caps.

  The coaching history spans nearly a century and reflects the team's shifting political and sporting contexts. José Tapia managed the side through the founding era and the 1938 campaign. Later coaches included a sequence of foreign managers: František Churda from Czechoslovakia in 1963-64, Kim Yong-ha from 1970-71, and the Italian Giovanni Campari, who served the longest stretch of the modern era from 1990 to 1996. Raúl González has returned to the role three separate times across different periods. The team's current kit supplier is Joma, who have supplied the strip since 2015. Adidas supplied the kit from 1981 to 1983 and again from 1988 to 2012, with a gap between 1984 and 1987 when no kit sponsor was listed.

  Cuba's squad for 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification matches in June 2025 was managed by Pedro Pablo Pereira, who took charge in 2025. The 23 players called up faced Antigua and Barbuda and Bermuda on the 6th and the 10th of June of that year.