Havana Good Time

Part three of my International Series now, and the randomiser saw fit that I go to the Caribbean (to follow my other International Series Careers, please refer to my signature). I put all the nations into the randomiser and it came up with the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, for some reason I was unable to choose them as a nation to manage, so I somewhat cheated and just picked Cuba anyways.



The potted history of the national side is interesting, and they were one of the first North American sides to embrace football. Qualifying for the 1938 World Cup, they achieved the greatest feat in the history of Caribbean football, reaching the Quarter Finals after defeating Rumania (not a typo, they were actually called that!). They were soundly beaten 8-0 in the Quarters to Sweden, but remain revered in Island folklore as a side that managed to go to Europe and beat them at their own game. Since then however their World Cup history has been disappointing. Failing to qualify since the 1938 edition, the team didn't even enter qualifying for 1958, 1962, 1970, 1974, 1986 or 1994.

The Gold Cup record has been rather unremarkable as well. They either failed to qualify or did not enter eight of the ten precursor tournaments of the CONCACAF Championship, but have at least been more consistent in the Gold Cup era, with seven qualifications from twelve and two Quarter Final achievements in 2003 and recently, in 2013. If we go even more local, Cuba are a regular feature in the bi-yearly Caribbean Cup, and although they only won their first trophy in the 2012 edition, they have finished in the final four places in each of the last seven tournaments, proving to be one of the Caribbean's strongest nations. With the top four from the tournament qualifying for the Gold Cup, it's imperative to give the competition respect.

So there's history in this Communist country, and history that I hope to tap from in order to make Cuba relevant on the footballing map again.

Tournaments and Qualifications

2013

So, we're beginning as Cuba. First off, the administrative stuff:



Deece wage for a nation like Cuba.



Overview of the nation. In the top half of the World Rankings, and with a decent population to pick players from.



Not a bad expectation, considering...



...we already made the Fourth Round. They've not done too well, 1 point from the first half of games, but at least they're there. However, the poor start would probably add reason to this:



Aaaaand already our ranking takes a blow.

Good luck mate, enjoyed your other saves!

Good luck mate, always enjoy a different save!

So I picked up where we left off, with the final round of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifiers. The team had done well to get to this stage but with one point from the first five, the odds of qualifying were virtually zero.



A defeat at home to Honduras didn't bode well, although we managed to get a goal to somewhat close the gap between the two sides.


A big defeat at Jamaica proved how light we were. Interesting was that we both scored in the 53rd minute, and I can confirm that it was us that scored the second goal of the minute, meaning we were 4-0 down at one point. Grim.



Another game, another defeat, although 2-0 down after 9 minutes, we held on to keep the scoreline, if not the other stats, respectable.



Didn't expect too much, truth be told.



We then somehow pulled this out the bag, a magnificent draw at Costa Rica! Despite the stats saying otherwise, we had many good chances to win the game and thoroughly deserved at least a point.



And we bowed out with a defeat to the USA. Similarly to the Mexican game, we crumbled early on and nearly made an embarrassment of the nation, but another great defensive display for 80 minutes kept the score down. On the right hand side, you can see that we got two points and five goals from ten games. Grim, but something to build on, I guess?



Oh yeah, and we fell out the top 100 of the World rankings....