After all, he is American..and it is against the law for Americans to travel to Cuba. The GWB administration is denying visas for family reunions and academic study, do you think they care about a WC qualifier?
The fact that he was hired by the Costa Rican FA to coach will be a good enough defence. I doubt GWB wants to get any heat from FIFA over this matter.
The travel ban has several exceptions, including travel for participation in internationally recognized sporting events, though there are still restrictions on how much money an American is legally allowed to spend when he is there. US sports teams travel to Cuba on a frequent basis. The USA won the soccer gold medal there in the 1991 Panamerican Games.
I guess a rather interesting situation would be if the Nats had to play an away game in Havana for qualifying. How easy was it for Americans to get into Cuba for those PanAm games in '91? Would we have to 'defect' and boat it from Key West?
Interestingly enough, the US has never had to play Cuba in the "random" qualifier draw since Castro took control. I visited Cuba in 1999 after applying for and getting a 5 day license from the Department of Treasury, valid only for 30 days, with spending limits including 180 dollars per day. No problem for a tightwad like me. That was under the Clinton era, where it was easier to be certified as a freelance writer. Now, it is rough. I imagine I would be given a license if I appllied again but, maybe not. The U.S. Government is busting tons of people who go there without a license. Sometimes they allow them to serve their jail sentences on the weekends. It is not illegal to travel to Cuba; it is illegal to spend US currency there. But the US dollar is the national currency so that makes it tough. With the collapse of the dollar the Euro is taking over everywhere, but I am not aware if you can use the Euro and have the US courts let you off the hook. People travelling in groups for artistic and cultural exchanges are elligible for licenses and this became a cottage industry in the late nineties. All kinds of professional conventions were held in Havana or Varadaro. These days it is much tougher. I talked to someone on the train last month who organizes tours to Cuba for Jewish groups, who visit and bring medical supplies to Jewish groups in Cuba. These appear to fit squarely within the humanitarian and cultural group exception, so I imagine a World Cup Qualifiers with a national team would too, but I don't make the rules. It would be very ironic if Sampson, who did so much to help our national team, ended up in jail because of this. Keep in mind that many Hollywood luminaries, including, I believe, Arnold Swarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, openly defied the embargo when they went to Havana for a cigar convention in 1998, without applying for a license. But they are in with the in crowd aren't they?
I am saying recently, in the last 1-2 months the restrictions and enforcement have been tightened. A friend of mine who was supposed to return to Cuba after 25 years for a huge family reunion, had their visas revoked at the last minute. If GWB could care less what the rest of the world and the UN says about more important issues, you think some "soccer organization" is even on his radar screen?
Even if Sampson got sentenced to a jail term, it's not like Costa Rica would extradite him. Well, not until he does something (or somethings) ridiculously stupid and crashes them out of WCQ, anyway.
thats where it pays off to have 2 Passports (Mexican and American). My cousin wants to have his bachelor party in Cuba so I will have to use my Mexican Passport.
rdl. Be careful. They will know about your visit to Cuba. We flew via Mexico City and there was no stamp in the passport, no paper trail in the U.S. When I entered the US at O'Hare, the customs official swept my passport, and an alarm went off directly above us and a siren went off. When I asked him what was going on, he said: "Someone is going to jail." We walked towards the second checkpoint and a customs official walked up and said: "Are you Thomas Flannigan?" I did not congratulate him on his clairvoyance but said, "Yes." He studied me for a second and waved us through. We had broken no law, but they let us know that they know.
They fly on a charter plane to Havana, just like the Baltimore Orioles did a few years ago. The USA almost played Cuba in the last qualifying cycle. The draw for the semifinal round was held before the last Caribbean preliminary rounds were completed. The draw placed the the USA in the same group as the winner of Barbados vs. Cuba. Both Barbados/Cuba matches ended 1-1, and Barbados advanced to the semifinal round on PKs, 5-4.
There is NO WAY we would play Cuba this time around. Not only would they have to beat Costa Rica in this round, but then they'd have to play in the toughest semifinal group... no way they are getting to the final hex.
If they beat Costa Rica, that qualifying group starts to look easier, though. There's no one there they can't play with. Granted, they probably have a less than 10% chance of tying Costa Rica on the road when Costa Rica has so much riding on the game, but it's not impossible. I'd say taking down Costa Rica in a two-game set is harder than coming in second in the semis, even in Concacaf's group of death.
Tom -- Is there any dictatorship on the planet you have not visited? In 1979, as a kid I went to Panama, back in the days when it was under a military government. Even at that age, I could tell something was not right (and the military government was of the not very competant junta type, not the bread lines and cult of personality type). I promised myself I would never go to such a country as a tourist again, and have kept that promise (I will of course go if working for the government).
Maybe the security guards were just propoents of Title IX and they wanted to let you know how they felt about it!
Sandon, I hope you don't start heckling too! Cuba is in CONCACAF and this question is bound to come up again. To answer Anthony's question, it depends on how you define dictatorship. I have not been able to get into North Korea, although we came within a day of doing so during the 2002 World Cup. Our application had been approved but we were told at the last minute there was no boat the only day we could squeeze it in. When I got home there was a little mailing from KTNO advertising discount rates for the boat the day they said there was no boat. I tried for years to get into Albania and finally did so on Christmas Eve 1996, but by that time the dictator was gone and chaos was in his place. I think the worst dictatorship I ever visited was Rumania in 1984. Nothing worked, no streetlights, beer tasted like salt water, police looked like ragpickers, one channel of TV on 3 hours per night and it was all pictures of Ceaucescu. The Hotel Marta was a dump of a higher order. I met two English tourists in the hotel and they thought they were in a horror movie ("It's worse than Russia!"). One of my clients has been stationed in all kinds of weird places in the last 7 years: Kosovo, Kyrghistan, Bosnia. He says Rumania is the worst place he has ever seen. I think Cuba, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and others are heavenly compared to Rumania. By the way I like to visit nice places and there are some dangerous hellholes I have no interest in visiting. Cuba is a nice place even though it has a bad government that has run the place into the ground.