CUBA: FOOTBALL LIKE HOPE GROWS IN THE MOST UNLIKELY PLACES

May 16, 2025

In a country where baseball reigns supreme, João Tamura turns his lens toward the quiet, persistent rise of football in Cuba.

From the dusty streets of Havana to improvised pitches in Santiago, he captures the sport not just as a game, but as a growing symbol of hope, identity, and global connection.

In this evocative essay, Tamura explores how football takes root in the margins — played barefoot, beneath peeling balconies, by boys chasing dreams stitched in the colours of distant clubs.

“Perhaps it comes from the skinny bodies dodging stones, stray dogs, and potholes in the streets of Santiago, as if they were Barcelona defenders.”

SLOWLY LIKE SHY FLOWERS

In Cuba, football is omnipresent: it’s played at any time, in any place — from the streets of Havana, where piles of stones stand in for goalposts, to the Playas del Este, where boys run until sweat blends with salt.

Baseball is still king, crowned in worn-down stadiums where sun-bleached flags flutter like ghosts in celebration.

Many Cuban baseball players leave for the United States or Japan, signing generous contracts; the path for footballers, perhaps due to the sport’s lesser popularity and investment, has been more complicated.

Yet football is growing — slowly, like shy flowers sprouting from cracks in the pavement. It grows among the younger generations, those who wear Real Madrid and Barcelona shirts like dreams still waiting to be lived.

Sometimes, in the middle of a match, a red Liverpool shirt appears, or a black-and-white Juventus one — reminders that the world is much larger than this island wedged between the sea and memory.

And despite all the blockades, it still finds its way here: through satellite dishes, weak internet signals, and the celebrations of children imitating goals they’ve never seen live.

On the boys’ faces, Messi and Cristiano remain unshakable gods — still without true successors, and still without a Cuban hero whose name and number might one day be printed on the shirts they wear.

THE FUTURE IS STILL TAKING ROOT IN THESE BOYS’ COLOURFUL SHIRTS

Today, the Cuban national team is little more than a faded number on FIFA’s list: 167th, like someone descending an endless staircase. In 2006, the ranking was different — 46th — but since then, the team has declined at the same slow pace as the country’s survival and aching longing.

But perhaps — who knows — the future is taking root in these boys in colourful shirts, running through an immense Havana, among buildings whose beauty survives beneath layers of peeling paint, balconies strung with drying clothes, and cars from a distant past.

Perhaps it’s being born on the improvised pitches of Matanzas, where dust rises in golden, thin clouds beneath worn-out boots.

Perhaps it comes from the skinny bodies dodging stones, stray dogs, and potholes in the streets of Santiago, as if they were Barcelona defenders.

Watching them, it seems possible to believe that one day, among those sweaty, smiling kids, hides the name that will lift a national team. Because football—like hope always grows in the most unlikely places.