MADRID, Spain.- Cuban soccer player Maikel Chang, current Major League Soccer (MLS) player, is visiting Cuba, after more than eight years without being able to enter the Island due to the measure applied by the regime to those who abandon teams abroad.
In a recent interview with the sports media Play Off Magazinecarried out as a result of this visit, Chang confessed that all those years “without visiting his country, without seeing his people, his mother, the family”, were “very hard”.
“People only see the results, when you are playing in MLS. But the first years were difficult and I was close to giving up football. In the first year with the Charleston Battery, of the USL, I injured my biceps femoris and I lived with the injury for about three years, as I trained and did not recover,” explained the athlete, who currently resides in Utah, United States.
Chang, who started playing soccer in Cuba in the 9-10 age category and came to play in national and international championships, asked about his decision to emigrate, explained that after returning from the Pan American Games in 2011, there were several Mexican teams. interested in him.
“At that time you could not hire yourself abroad, as is the case now. Later, we went to the U-23 World Cup, in the United States. In the last game I had an ankle injury. When we returned to Cuba, the senior team was going to start preparing to qualify for the World Cup in Brazil, but they decided that I would not enter the squad because I had an ankle injury. (…) They pushed me aside and I was at home for a few months, doing nothing, without playing soccer. (…) I dreamed of being a professional and I thought at that moment that I could do it. I told myself: ‘the next time they call me to the national team, I’m going to have to take the step and more, because of the way they treated me,’” he recounted.
Later he was called up to the national team again, to play against Canada and at that moment he made the decision.
“It was a decision that I made in cold blood and it was hard. Maybe I think about it again, about 10 times, but from the way they pushed me aside, I said to myself: I want to play professional, I want to get ahead and my life is soccer. (…) He was very young, he knew that, at that time, he would not be able to return to Cuba. The law, then, said that if you abandoned a delegation, you could not return to Cuba and then it was that they put in place the eight-year law. It was a tough decision, because you weren’t going to see the people from the neighborhood, the family, “added the footballer.
Maikel Chang also confessed that he would like to play for the national team again, “but many things have to change for one to be enthusiastic about representing Cuba”; above all because “the mentality of managers has not changed”.
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