14ymedio, Pedro Espinosa, Havana, 18 January 2024 — “It’s a pasture,” says the athletic coach as he contemplates the desolation of the Pedro Marrero stadium in Havana’s Playa district. The soccer field originally belonged to the old Tropical Brewery. Maradona once played here but it is about to turn 100 years old and looks its age. Though the grass is worn and and the track is full of potholes, the coach’s students run wild here.
There is no trace of the eight million dollars that the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) gave Cuba between 2016 and 2022 to improve its facilities.
It was never a high-end stadium but at least it was well maintained and had some moments of fame. Like that day in June 2000 when the Argentine soccer player scored a goal right before checking himself into a Cuban drug addiction clinic at Fidel Castro’s urging. Times have changed. “No one plays soccer here anymore,” the coach tersely admits.
The fragile zinc roof totters on rusty columns covered in graffiti, the walkway walls need painting and chunks of the stone benches are missing
His colleagues in the provincial athletics program are waging a small battle with the National Sports Institute (INDER). Athletes need a space to train, they argue, and no one has played at Pedro Marrero for years. They prefer the slightly less precarious facilities of the Pan-American Village. The only good to come out of it, the coach says, is that officials finally turned it over to the people who actually use it.
At the moment those are chamacos, street kids who come here to play, and teenage athletes whom their coach cajoles from the stands. On the field, the boys do what they can. The rain has left the grass sticky and wet, and water gathers in potholes on the track. It is impossible to have a clean race. They avoid the puddles by jumping over them.
If the field and the track are bad, the stands are not much better. The fragile zinc roof totters on rusty columns covered in graffiti, the walkways need painting and chunks are missing from the stone benches, which look like they have been hit with a sledge