Onel Hernández cannot remember touching a football during the first six years of his life. He and his friends in Morón, a city in central Cuba, would steal fruit from trees and play with marbles in the street but he was rarely happier than when he looked up at the sky. The birds transfixed him to the extent that he pleaded for a miniature aviary of his own. “My uncle brought 10 of them home for me,” he says. “We kept them in the garden, we’d let them out and in the evening they’d come back. In Cuba people don’t have a lot but they’re content with what they have, and this was my youth.”
These days the country has its own native Canary. Hernández has become an outstanding member of Daniel Farke’s Norwich City side, who sit four points clear of the Championship and appear bound for a promotion few had foreseen in August. His dynamic, insistent displays from the wing have been a big factor and, should they make it, he will become the Premier League’s first Cuba-born player.
“It’s amazing how many people send me messages about that every day,” he says. “On Facebook, Instagram, people from the Cuban community in America and all over. They are so happy and say: ‘We are proud of you.’ It’s unbelievable really.”
Yet Hernández would not have had the chance to reach that milestone if, as that carefree six-year-old, he had not left for Germany. Between 1961 and 2016, no footballer from Cuba was permitted to sign a full-time contract, a policy that stemmed from Fidel Castro’s outlawing of professional sport. That did not stop many of the dozens who defected to the United States but, in Hernández’s case, it was a change in family circumstance that allowed things to turn out differently.
“My life started in Germany,” he says of his arrival to live with his mother, Yaneisy, and his German stepfather, Ewald. He had not seen Yaneisy for two years and had no idea what was happening when he and his older sister were taken to the airport. “If you stop crying you can have that big car outside,” his grandmother told him in an effort to restore calm, but shortly afterwards the plane took off.Ewald was a coach at TuS Westfalia Neuenkirchen, a comfortable drive from the family’s home near Gütersloh, and believed football would help his stepson integrate. “He brought me to football, coached me, did everything for me, supported me every time,” Hernández says. “He saw something in me and it was amazing. He was my stepfather: he didn’t have to do this, you know? I’m very thankful. If it was not for him I don’t know where I would be today – maybe in Cuba playing with birds again.”
He did not stop to realise a career in the game might be possible until, at 14, he joined Arminia Bielefeld. “I realised: ‘Hey, something here can change your life; you can be a footballer,’” he says. He was given his debut by Christian Ziege, the team’s then-coach, when he was 17. Eventually he joined Werder Bremen’s Under-23s, later moving to Wolfsburg’s second string.
Ewald was a coach at TuS Westfalia Neuenkirchen, a comfortable drive from the family’s home near Gütersloh, and believed football would help his stepson integrate. “He brought me to football, coached me, did everything for me, supported me every time,” Hernández says. “He saw something in me and it was amazing. He was my stepfather: he didn’t have to do this, you know? I’m very thankful. If it was not for him I don’t know where I would be today – maybe in Cuba playing with birds again.”
He did not stop to realise a career in the game might be possible until, at 14, he joined Arminia Bielefeld. “I realised: ‘Hey, something here can change your life; you can be a footballer,’” he says. He was given his debut by Christian Ziege, the team’s then-coach, when he was 17. Eventually he joined Werder Bremen’s Under-23s, later moving to Wolfsburg’s second string.
But Hernández felt he was stagnating and joined Eintracht Braunschweig. A near-miss with promotion to the Bundesliga ensued in 2016-17 and by the following January his form had persuaded Farke – who spent six years coaching at SV Lippstadt, 10 miles from Hernández’s home, and had used the bush telegraph smartly – to make his move.
“He already knew all about me,” Hernández says. “Sometimes you come to a coach and he’ll just say: ‘You’re this, you’re that, I’m happy you came here.’ When I first arrived in Norwich he told me stories where I thought: ‘Wow, how do you know this?’”
Hernández loves playing for the club, who travel to Middlesbrough on Saturday. He feels Farke “changed my philosophy of playing football … makes me 100% better”. He believes that, along with the speed and physicality honed in Germany, he brings “a sort of rhythm” from his Cuban roots.
Six goals have resulted and the most recent, in the derby win against Ipswich last month, was the kind of contribution that usually guarantees cult-hero status.
As it happens, he already had that in the bag. In January Hernández gave an interview to the club’s matchday programme in which he expressed incredulity at the shopping possibilities presented by Argos. It caused quite a stir, culminating in a recent signing session at the local store.
“I was sat at home with [teammate] Dennis Srbeny and we thought about where we can buy a TV,” he says. “We went out, saw Argos and went inside. We didn’t really know how it worked but we learned fast and then I bought a lot of other things there. Everyone thinks footballers only need the best things in life, or whatever, but it’s one of my favourite shops in the UK.”
One of the best things Hernández can imagine would be a debut for Cuba. He received an Under-18 cap for Germany in 2010 but has a Cuban passport and says he will “never give up the fight” to play. He travels whenever possible to visit Yaneisy, who has returned home and lives on a farm with 30 cows, half a dozen horses and a drove of pigs. But more regular visits to represent the Leones Del Caribe have been prohibited, with overseas-based players broadly barred from doing so.
“It’s very sad because we have good players around the world who want to come back and help,” he says. “We don’t need the money, we want to play for free. My mum spoke with the coach and the federation; she told me they don’t know what to do but they are fighting in the hope that one day we can come back and play. She said there are a lot of politicians that don’t really want to support football. Baseball, basketball, boxing, other sports, but not football. I don’t really know what the problem is, but it’s horrible.”
In a sign that things may be changing slowly, the Cuba coach, Raúl Mederos, felt emboldened to call up Hernández for the match against Dominican Republic in November, only to downgrade the offer just as the player was scouring flight schedules. He could travel, train and meet the squad but would not be permitted to play. “I was so proud,” he says of the moment when the impasse appeared to have been broken. “It’s one of my biggest dreams.
“If I could play in the national team and in the Premier League it would be incredible. Cuba has a lot of history, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. To be a Cuban and play in the Premier League for Norwich would be such a privilege.”
The Guardian Sport
