The evening is not over for Vozinha, Cape Verdean hero against Spain. With a flag draped around his body, the goalkeeper ran around the Atlanta stadium with gleeful aimlessness. Finally, when the broadcasters managed to pull him over for a chat, his eyes were welling up with tears, mixing with sweat dripping from his forehead. He was delighted that his seven saves, each rolled into the history books, capped his country’s greatest night in football.
But he was sad that his mother was not with him. Tickets booked, bags packed, but she was denied a visa.
“She couldn’t come here because of the visa. We didn’t handle the money you have to pay for the visa in time. I’d like her to come here,” he sighed, holding up the match-winning memento as if it were a piece of his soul.
Emotions took over. “I cried after the game because I grew up with my grandparents when I was little, and they couldn’t be there. They passed away a few years ago,” he told reporters. He was linked to his grandmother — and that’s why his club-mates started calling him Josimar José Evora Dias “Vozinha”. Wozinha means grandmother in Creole.
At first he was unhappy, as he thought they were making fun of him, but later he willingly accepted the name.
The first name Josimar was a tribute to his father’s favorite player, the Brazilian right back.
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He turned 40 a week before the tournament, making him the oldest World Cup debutant. The footballing journeys of Cape Verde and Wozinha mirror each other. The third smallest country to play in the World Cup, it is a collection of 10 islands dotted off the coast of West Africa with a population of 529,000. When Vozinha grew up, on the small island of São Vicente, the country had no structured leagues or local heroes to fuel his imagination, nor drive and direction. He was 25 by the time he turned professional, his career taking him to nondescript leagues from Cape Verde to Cyprus, Angola, Moldova and Slovakia, before joining Portuguese second division side Desportivo de Chaves.
Smiling, he recalled the journey: “I would tell 18-year-old Vozinha to be proud of himself. He worked hard. To be honest, I never dreamed of such things when I was young, but after this game I can tell the younger version of me that it was all worth it,” he reflected.
He almost missed the World Cup after youngster Bruno Varela was promoted to first choice. “I was thinking of staying with the national team. All my teammates talked to me, they encouraged me to stay for the World Cup. So I stayed, because it was my dream, all of us,” he told Goalkeeper.com.
A commentator called The Rock of Cape Verde. No eminent master of Spain could violate his limbs or will. The sharpest goal of all came two minutes into first-half injury time, when he tipped Améric Laporte’s header into the bottom corner. Minutes earlier, he had denied Mikel Oyarzabal a header that was deflected into him.
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It wasn’t just about the saves he made or the reflexes he showed, but his sheer presence and command in the box, his decisions about when to run and collect the ball and when not. Like a master auteur, he directed the defense, sometimes yelled at them, encouraged them when they finally intervened.
50K to 1.5 million followers
He became such an instant celebrity that local television CazéTV asked viewers to follow Vozinha’s official Instagram account instead of subscribing to their channel. Within an hour, his following touched 1.5 million followers, down from less than 50,000 at the start of the game.
A battalion of lively fans, mainly immigrants who had settled in Massachusetts (their third-choice keeper Carlos ‘CJ’ dos Santos was born in the US), joined the chants of the raucous Spain supporters, bringing them to life. Few players were luckier than Vozinha to have relatives in the stands. Pico López’s parents, Carlos and Judy, his brothers and his wife’s family came down from Ireland, his mother’s country, for which he came up through the age groups. His recruitment is a piece of folklore—responding to a LinkedIn invite he thought was a prank.
Small but smart
But his moment of glory was not an alignment of favorable stars. It originated from systematic planning under the guidance of technical director Rui Costa, a former Portugal midfielder. The biggest challenge was population, but Cape Verdeans were spread across the globe
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Someone had to bring them together. So in 2019, the federation compiled a list of every player of Cape Verdean descent playing in leagues abroad, watched each of them and personally contacted those who made an impact. First on the list was captain Ryan Mendes, a product of Paris’ famed Le Havre academy and once considered better than Paul Pogba and Riyad Mahrez.
The 25-member team consisted of people born in France, Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Cape Verde. All 25 play for 25 different clubs in 16 different countries.
The greatest unifier was their language, the Cape Verdean dialect of Creole. Their families, wherever they went and with whom they assimilated, preserved and passed on the language. Local music strikes a cultural chord during practice sessions.
Funded by FIFA, they built a state-of-the-art stadium, where they sealed their historic moment. The president wanted to name Pele, the Brazilian had never visited the country before someone told him. Now, they can credit Cape Verdean rock Wozinha for perhaps producing their most memorable hour of the World Cup.