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The last time Gary Stempel coached the Panamanian under-23 soccer team, they got farther into the eliminations to get to the Olympics than any previous isthmian squad had ever gone. After a disagreement with the federation, Stempel left that post to coach in ANAPROF, then took over the under-20 team and qualified for the world championships that will take place in the United Arab Emirates this fall. After that thrilling and unprecedented success, Stempel once again took charge of the under-23 team. Games that count will start taking place later this year, but meanwhile in a series of friendly matches the team is beginning to take shape. Two such games took place on June 27 and 29, when the Cubans came to play at Rommel Fernandez Stadium.

Cuba is a regional athletic powerhouse, but not particularly in soccer. An under-23 team that doesn’t beat the Cubans while playing on its home turf isn’t likely to make it to the Olympics. This time Panama took both games, the first one by a 2-0 margin. I caught the second contest, and though I know what I saw, I’m not sure what it means about Panama’s chances.

In the scoreless first half, Cuba had one good scoring opportunity and Panama had four.

The first very obvious thing was that Panama has this fleet-footed duo of Luis Tejada and José Garcés up front, and if they had put the ball in the net every time they had a good chance, Cuba would have been routed in the first half. Tejada and Garcés are explosive players, who streak downfield for long passes or when the opposition makes a mistake. They outran the Cuban defenders all afternoon.

The second noteworthy thing about Stempel’s squad is that it’s tightly disciplined on defense, making few mistakes.

On the other hand, the Panamanian side hardly connected with any passes in the middle of the field. They didn’t move the ball well when they were in Cuba’s end, either. Their offense was fast breaking, long passing and, when push came to shove, opportunistic.

And so it continued into the second half, when at 7:10 Garcés found himself in the box with an open net in front of him, and missed. But about two and one-half minutes later the Cubans made a defensive blunder, a ball that should have been cleared came out to Garcés, who passed it to Tejada, who scored a very pretty goal, picking the upper right-hand corner of the net.

That was it for the scoring. Panama had another couple of good opportunities in the remainder of the game, against three or four for Cuba.

Stempel has not yet refined this team to its best, but in comments on TV and to the daily newspapers he seemed satisfied with the progress that’s being made. But how good is good enough?



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