Galindo looks only forward
It was on a July evening almost two years ago that Maykel Galindo made his move.
At 24, with only the clothes on his back and little money in his pocket, he walked out of his hotel in Seattle, boarded a bus waiting outside -- it didn’t matter where it was going -- and rode off into a new life.
Defecting from Cuba was that easy.
At the time, Galindo was a starting forward on the Cuban national soccer team competing in the Gold Cup. Earlier that Saturday, he had scored Cuba’s only goal in a 3-1 loss to Costa Rica at Qwest Field, but when he found himself momentarily free of the chaperones watching over the Cuban players, he made a break for it.
Galindo had been to the U.S. twice before, for the 2002 and 2003 Gold Cup tournaments, but had not been ready to defect. “I came as a kid,” he said this week. “I didn’t think the way I do now. I decided in 2005 that I would stay and do everything I could to become a professional player.”
Galindo’s gamble paid off. Friends in Seattle helped him gain political asylum. He earned a roster spot with the Seattle Sounders, whose faith Galindo repaid by scoring the Sounders’ only goal in the final when they won the United Soccer Leagues championship in 2005.
In February, he was signed by Major League Soccer’s Chivas USA, and tonight, in his third start, he again will partner with Ante Razov in the attack when Chivas plays Real Salt Lake at the Home Depot Center.
Getting the chance to play professionally, Galindo said, was one reason he defected to the U.S., but it wasn’t the only reason. “I wanted to help my family,” he said of his grandparents, parents, brother and sisters back home in the central Cuban province of Villa Clara. “They gave me what little I had, and now I want to help them.”
How does he do that? “I send money,” he said.
Galindo’s hometown of Santa Clara, about two hours’ drive from Havana, is where Che Guevara’s remains are buried. Politically, and more to the point, climatically, it is a far cry from the rain and cold of Seattle, but Galindo was not deterred.
“I did it because I had to,” he said of adapting to life in the Pacific Northwest. “But things went well when I was there because of the people who helped me. I was happy. I felt really good there.”
His Seattle friends included Mariners shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, another Cuban exile from the same town of Santa Clara.
Galindo’s initial contact with Chivas was, literally, a painful one. When the Sounders played a preseason friendly against Chivas last year, Galindo’s face came into sudden and violent contact with Chivas goalkeeper Preston Burpo’s knee as both went for a loose ball.
Galindo suffered a broken nose and a shattered orbital bone that required extensive surgery and a long recovery time. “He was a little bit unlucky,” Burpo said. “I felt bad for him and for the Sounders, but sometimes when you play that’s the way it goes.”
Burpo has watched Galindo in his first two MLS games and come away impressed.
“He’s been energetic, and he’s caused the defense some problems,” Burpo said. “He’s talented. He’s fast. He’s got the desire to improve.”
Martin Vasquez, Chivas’ assistant coach, said getting Galindo and Razov to click as an attacking tandem is a key to the team’s 2007 season. “He’s very grateful to be here, for many reasons,” Vasquez said. “He has expressed that, and he wants to answer with work, scoring goals and winning games for us.”
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CHIVAS USA TONIGHT
vs. Real Salt Lake, 7:30, FSNW
Site -- Home Depot Center.
Radio -- 1020.
Records -- Chivas 1-1-0, Real Salt Lake 0-0-2.
Record vs Real (2006) -- 1-0-3.
Update -- Chivas will be without defender Carlos Llamosa (left knee sprain). Real Salt Lake added midfielder Freddy Adu and Panamanian striker Luis Tejada this season, but Adu has a left hip strain and Tejada has a left hamstring strain, making both probable starters.
