Another day, another soccer defection

The Cuban national soccer team played a World Cup qualifier in Washington DC and that can only mean one thing... at least one of the Cuban players is going to defect. They didn't disappoint. Reuters reports that midfielder Pedro Faife, 24, and forward Reynier Alcantara, 26, disappeared from their hotel outside Washington before a practice on Friday.

Just how often does something like this happen? That same Reuters article mentions 6 Cuban players defecting in March and Maykel Galindo, who defected after a Cuban national game, now plays in the MLS. Five Rwandan players defected to France in '96. Most of the Haitian national team tried as well. A Rumanian player tried to defect to Australia. Three Iraqi players did too. Six Eritrean soccer players defected to Angola. 300 Poles defected to Spain after traveling there to watch the World Cup. And in 1926, pretty much Hakoah Vienna's entire team defected and started New York Hakoah. And these are just the result of 5 minutes of googling. The list goes on and on