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Seattle Sounders midfielder and former Cuban international Osvaldo Alonso has just been reunited with his father, eight years after he defected to the United States.

In 2007, Alonso was with his international team-mates shopping in a Walmart store for gifts to take back home. But little did they know he'd already made plans never to return to Cuba.

In 2013, he explained how he used a trip to a shopping mall to make his escape.

Hear more stories of footballers who've fled their homelands, often because of the horrors of civil war, in a special Sportsworld programme on Saturday.

Photo: Osvaldo Alonso. Credit: Getty Images.