Former Cuban president Fidel Castro blamed Cuban sports leaders, including himself, for “falling asleep in the laurels” after Cuba’s humbling second-round exit from the World Baseball Classic.
Defending Classic champion Japan blanked Cuba 5-0 on Wednesday to eliminate them from the global showdown of Cuba’s most beloved sport, ending 50 years of podium finishes by Cuban squads.
Not since the 1959 Pan American Games had Cuba failed to finish in the top three of a major international tournament and not in 38 events had it failed to reach the final.
“The guilty are we who did not know to correct our errors in time,” Castro said in an article on the Web site Cubadebate.
Castro, 82, was critical of those who guided the squad, saying the team was “unobjectionably beaten and needed to get the pertinent lessons.”
“I must indicate that the direction of the team in San Diego was terrible,” Castro said.
Castro also blamed US organizers for including Cuba in a group with Japan and South Korea, what he declared was placing the world’s three best teams in the same bracket to ease the semi-final path for political rival US.
“The most important thing for the organizers was to eliminate Cuba, a revolutionary country that has resisted heroically and that could have won in the battle of the ideas,” Castro wrote.
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