Let’s make one thing perfectly clear about any rumors that may have been floating around for nearly four decades.

Chicago Sting president Clive Toye did not schedule a trip to Cuba for his soccer team so he could get his hands on some Cuban cigars. Soccer was the main reason for the historic visit. Any cigars smoked by Toye were merely a by-product of an historic trip.

Some 37 years ago Toye, flying by the the seat of his pants in more ways than one in the Caribbean, managed to put together a rather hastily organized, last-minute trip for his North American Soccer League team to that mysterious nation that lies just 90 miles off the Florida coast.

That is in marked contrast to the New York Cosmos, who last month announced that they would become the first American professional sports team to play in Cuba since the Baltimore Orioles in 1999. They have months to plan through the logistical maze for their June encounter against the Cuban national team at Pedro Marrero Stadium.

Things were different in 1978. The Sting held its preseason in the Caribbean, visiting Barbados and Haiti. As Cosmos president in 1977, Toye had tried to set up a game between that world-renowned side and the Cubans. It never materialized.

“Had it been the Cosmos going there it would have been a huge story,” he says, noting that the Cosmos made news when a Soviet team came to play them and when the team went to China.

“That was big,” Toye says. “The Chicago Sting hadn’t done very well, weren’t very prominent. It wasn’t like they were going to us three months earlier and we were beating the drum. I remember getting on with [Sting owner] Lee Stern. ‘Get on a bloody plane and get down.’ There was not enough time for him to do it. We were in Port-au-Prince, not in Chicago with access to the media to beat the drum.”

A call came out of the blue that the Cubans wanted Toye’s team to play them. Toye told them he wasn’t with the Cosmos anymore, but the Cubans didn’t care.

“I had no idea I was going to hear from the Cubans,” he said. “I had given up on that. I had never thought about it, quite frankly, after leaving the Cosmos. It was a surprise. It would be easier to say, ‘Forget about it.’ There were no flights from Port-au-Prince to Havana. There were no flights from anywhere to Havana.”

In addition, after two weeks in the Caribbean, the Sting players were ready to go home. “We were shocked,” defender Dan McCrudden says. “We were tired and we wanted to go home, but when that opportunity came, to go to Cuba we were pretty excited about it.”

Toye managed to secure a pilot and a Dakota plane – better known to Americans as a DC-3 – which enjoyed a successful tour in World War Two.

“The pilot, bless his soul, had flight instructions” that had to be followed “very strictly,” Toye says. Maybe, maybe not. “They had us flying around going past Cuba,” then Sting assistant coach Willy Roy says. “We probably went over Cuba three, four times. [That] made the trip a lot longer before we finally got clearance to land.”

Even before the team left the airport Toye managed to secure a personal prize when Cuban officials took him to the main office for coffee. “I had been in Haiti for a while and a shortage of cigars,” he said. “I really did need a cigar. So I said, ‘I have something to say now on which the future US-Cuban relations may rest.’ “

“Yes, yes, what was that?” the officials replied.

“Who’s got a cigar?” Toye said.

“One guy looked at me and said, ‘How many do you smoke?’”



To which Toye responded: “I don’t tell my wife, I smoke sometimes six a day.”

“He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a Cuban cigar for me. It was so funny. We had a good laugh about that.”

It was a good omen for the start of an important trip as the Sting became the first American sports team to visit the island since the Rochester Red Wings were literally ran out of the country when guns were fired at a baseball game in 1959.

The Sting were treated first class, housed in the old Sheraton Hotel.

“They wanted to make sure we were treated extremely well,” says Roy, who went on to direct the Sting to a pair of NASL championships. “You could see basically the rooms were the same, except the faucets were broken. They had to make their own parts because they couldn’t get any replacement parts from the States because of the embargo. The food that they served, they were like seven-course meals. Absolutely phenomenal. The federation did an outstanding job treating us. They took us to a play. I forgot the name, but a lot of beautiful Cuban girls were dancing in it.”

The team also got a tour of Havana. “Before we got onto the bus, the bus driver said, ‘Do not say anything negative about Castro or the Cuban regime in general because these buses were bugged,’ “ Roy recalls. “That kind of put a chill through your system.”



During some free time, the players went to a park close to the hotel. “A guy came up and befriended us and wanted our jeans,” McCrudden says. “We had the Levis at the time. He said he would buy our jeans from us. We were talking to him. The next thing you knew he just took off and he left. The next day he comes back when we were back out there and he said, ‘Did you see the secret police? They were following you guys.’ “

At the time, McCrudden was a wide-eyed, 22-year-old rookie out of the University of Rhode Island trying to secure a job with the Sting during their tour. It was priceless for an American at the time to get a rare taste of Cuba.

Willy Roy won the Soccer Bowl with Chicago Sting in 1981. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

When McCrudden talks of the trip today, “people look at me a little strange. They’re like, ‘There’s no way you went to Cuba.’ Some people disbelieve that because it wasn’t publicized, not too many many knew about it. It was definitely under the radar.”

As one of a handful of Americans McCrudden said he wasn’t treated any differently than the other players, who were mostly from England and Canada.

“The strangest thing occurred though,” McCrudden says. “Behind the hotel, when we looked out our window we saw this huge thing with a cover over it. When you walked around the hotel and looked down that street, it all closed off. It actually turned out to be a missile, a covered missile.

“We knew exactly where we were and that thing was probably pointed back at the States. But yeah, they had to cover it, but it was still on the street. That was really shocking.”

Any animosity that existed between the US and Cuban governments was not evident when the teams took to the field. The Sting players entered the stadium, walking down a long series of steps to the field. Prior to kickoff, both teams paraded on the track with someone holding a sign that read, “Chicago Stings.”

The game went on without a hitch. The hosts prevailed, 2-0, before a reported capacity crowd in a stadium that holds 30,000.

“They were pretty good,” McCrudden says. “They were good on the ball. They were pretty quick. We gave up two lousy goals and just didn’t play particularly well.”

Still in its building stages, the Sting had a shortage of players, so Roy, once a lethal goal-scorer for the US national team was pressed into service for the second half. Roy says he treated it like any other match

“A game is a game,” he said. “It’s not like you’re playing against an all-star team ... The games I played, they were all important to me. It didn’t matter if it was an exhibition game against kindergarten team. You always want to play good. The atmosphere was really different. When somebody did something good, the way they clapped, instead of cheering.”

McCrudden made his Sting debut in that game. A forward in college, he started at center midfield.

“I had a great opportunity to score a goal,” he said. “I played the ball out wide to the center-forward who had made a wide run and went right down the middle. All he had to do was cross the ball to me. He hit it too hard and he overhit it. I had to chase it down.”

Incredibly, when the Cosmos returned home there were no repercussions from the US government on traveling to the forbidden land. “No word, nothing,” Toye said.

Despite its historical significance, the Havana journey was not mentioned in the 1979 Sting media guide, although the return match at Soldier Field was. In contrast to the game in Cuba, only 4,153 showed up to watch a 1-1 draw a few months later. Andres Roldan gave the visitors a 1-0 lead in the 29th minute before Stefan Szefer equalized from Robert Gadocha’s assist in the 67th minute. The media guide called it “a very even and physical match.”

“McCrudden called it “a much simpler game. We were in the middle of our season so we were in top form.”

The Sting wasn’t much to write home about in 1978, finishing at 12-20.

Sting general manager Jim Walker said the highlight of the Cubans’ stay in the Windy City was when the NASL team treated them to a meal at the Playboy Club. “I thought there might be some repercussions from Cuba about it,” he says with a laugh. “The boys really enjoyed themselves. They had a meal and of course, the bunnies were around were waiting tables and all that. The team had a couple of drinks and that was it.”

Toye and Roy see the upcoming Cosmos trip to Cuba as a breakthrough.

“Anything the Cosmos do good to establish the fact that New York is Cosmos country and not Red Bull territory and not bloody New York City or whatever they’re called, is for me, it’s good,” Toye said. “Who cares if the Red Bulls go to Cuba. The Cosmos going there is very good. It’s something that should have been in 1978 and it takes a while, but now they’re there. Anything they can do to get publicity, anything they can do to reclaim the notice of soccer fans in the area, to me is first class.”

Roy sees it as a multi-fold opportunity for country and club.

“It’s better to have friends close by than enemies close by, so I think that’s a wonderful thing,” he said. “Hopefully instead of these Cuban baseball players when they [come to the USA to] seek asylum. There might be some good Cuban [soccer] talent that the players will see and might have a chance to recruit some years down the line.

“The talent level will get better once they get exposed to more international games, when they see that. When you see what a Beckenbauer did or what a Pele did, what some of these other great players did playing, they can rub shoulders with those players more often or get better coaching coming to Cuba. They might surprise some people.”

Asked if he had any advice for the Cosmos, Roy replied, “The biggest thing is you’re representing the NASL. They’ll probably get good competition down there. There is a lot of history they’ll be seeing. I found Havana, the streets, were extremely clean. People were friendly. It’s a once in a lifetime trip.”