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Grant Wahl's BlogU.S. Soccer Experiencing The Two Cubas about 9 hours ago :: 2919 Views

HAVANA, Cuba -- The strangeness of Cuba is mesmerizing, as the U.S. soccer team is learning after arriving here for Saturday’s first-ever World Cup qualifier against Cuba (8 p.m. ET, ESPN Classic and Galavisión). Just about every ordinary Cuban that you talk to is friendly, curious and open (especially if you speak Spanish). Many of them are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that everything will change here if Barack Obama is elected president.

But then comes the strangeness: one of the first things that any U.S. visitor sees here is the giant billboard on the road near the airport featuring the U.S. president, George W. Bush, next to Der Fuhrer. The billboard reads “Full De Asesinos,” which has a double meaning. “Ases” means Aces (the playing card theme is an echo of the U.S.-produced playing cards showing ex-Iraqi leaders), while “Asesinos” means Murderers.

(In case you’re wondering, one of the other two guys is the late Cuban-exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa.)

None of the U.S. players wanted to comment on what they thought when they saw the sign on Thursday, but a source close to the team says they most certainly saw it. My only hope, though, is that the U.S. players also get the chance to speak to a few ordinary Cubans during their stay here.

• SI photographer Simon Bruty has been in Havana all week covering the atmosphere around the soccer game as well as cool scenes from Havana, sporting and otherwise. Make sure to check out his photo gallery from the week here.

• Several U.S. news organizations received visas to report from Cuba this week, including SI, the Washington Post, the New York Times and ESPN television. But at least one U.S. newspaper was denied a visa. The Miami Herald applied for one and was rejected, according to a source close to the situation. The Herald has not been allowed to have a reporter in Cuba for more than 40 years. However, it does have undercover reporters on the island who file stories under the “Miami Herald Staff Writer” byline. It seems like the Herald can’t win: Cuban exiles in Miami often protest that the newspaper is too far to the left, while the Cuban government thinks it’s too far to the right.

• On Friday a group of U.S. writers had a roundtable interview with Cuban soccer federation president Luis Hernández at the stadium. Hernández, a well-connected pol and former national-team player, has been in power for 10 years, and he spouted some of the expected hoo-ha about Fidel Castro loving soccer (not likely; Fidel’s a baseball guy) and the excellent financial support the soccer federation is getting from the Cuban government (also not likely when former players like Maykel Galindo say they were only allowed to have one uniform jersey per year).

But Hernández was polite and even funny at times (“We prefer not to talk about women’s soccer, because as you guys know, you’re the best!”), and he did have a few intriguing things to say:

• Cubans who attend Saturday’s game will only have to pay 1 Cuban peso (or just a few pennies) for a ticket.

• The 1938 Cuban World Cup team that beat Romania and reached the quarterfinals was comprised largely of recent immigrants from Spain. (In that respect it was similar to the 1950 U.S. World Cup team that beat England.)

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