Leon
One of the best receivers in the world, Cuban Wilfredo León, has Polish citizenship for two years and a strong will to play for the Polish NT. But, Cuban federation still does not want to issue him the consent. Still, as Uznański revealed, there are big chances that León will compete for Poland in the 2018 FIVB World Championship.
“The Cubans are a very proud nation and they are a tough to negotiate with. It’s as if someone would want to take away Bartek (Bartosz) Kurek from us. They know the value of this player (León) well. They also know that he will no longer play for their national team, so why would they give away their pearl for free? Negotiations will be difficult, long, but they are ongoing. They require really great discretion and restraint,” claims the press spokesman of the Polish VF.
The process of changing national team jersey is long. There are several conditions to be met, but all roads lead to the consent of the native federation, which Cuban is not willing to provide.
“Is he going to compete in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo? I think so. Maybe even in the 2018 World Championship… Of course, this is not a declaration. The Cubans have all the cards on their side, now only the decision of the FIVB Committee could change it… We are not yet at a stage where we can talk about the specific amount of money in the negotiations …” Uznański added for “Polsat Sport”.
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0 comment
I feel pitty for the countries that are willing to pay millions to have a foreign help them… Where is your patriotism? Win with pride, loose with it aswell… What happened with Italy and Osmany??? Still loosing… Poland is a great team, why add someone that will bring dificult relations inside the locker room just because he puts 2 more balls on the floor??? Is that really worth it?
That would be incredible, when this happens the Polish NT will be stronger and able to compete consistently at a more higher level, but this will only happen if the other players on the NT accepts him as an equal.
The real fault is with Cuban Volleyball federation and their nonsense rule that players who plays professionally outside of Cuba are banned from national team (Juantorena said this in his interview). Those players make living by playing professionally and blackmailing them like this is not fair. Yet they don’t let them play for other countries and compete in Olympics , World League and other national tournament.
Just because of stupidity of Cuban volleyball federation they are nowhere on world volleyball map. Imagine team of Juantorena, Leon, Marshall, Simon, Leal, they would rock the world.
cuba has tons of talented volleyball players but they don’t know ho to keep them for exampl juantorena and now leon.