Cuban Soccer Players Defect: I Guess Free Health Care Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be

After playing to a 1-1 ties in an Olympic qualifying match with the United States 5 Cuban (now 7) players defect from the team.

Five members of the Cuban Under-23 national soccer team have defected in the United States while visiting the country for an Olympic qualifier, local media said on Wednesday.

A report on the Web site of the Miami Herald newspaper said the players abandoned their team after a match against the United States near Tampa Bay, Florida, on Tuesday night. The match ended in a 1-1 draw.

Team captain Yenier Bermudez, goalkeeper Jose Manuel Miranda, defender Erlys Garcia Baro, midfielder Yordany Alvarez and defender Loanni Prieto hatched the plan back in Cuba but told no one. Not even their families knew of their intent to defect, the Miami Herald said.

It said they spent Wednesday in Lake Worth, a town near Palm Beach about an hour's drive north of Miami, while trying to figure out how to begin a new life away from their communist-ruled homeland.

The good news for them is that they are allowed how to figure out how to make a new life in this country.