Read 4 minutesKolkata22 Jun 2026 02:18 PM IST
On October 13 last year, the Cape Verde government announced a half-day holiday so the country could watch their team play Iswatini. Cape Verde won 3-0. They haven’t stopped since. José María Silva, National Director of State Protocol, said qualification for the World Cup was the third defining moment in Cape Verde’s history, after Independence Day and the first multiparty elections in 1991. On Sunday in Miami, they drew Uruguay, the two-time world champions, 2-2. They have not lost a single match in this World Cup. They may not be complete.
It is a team made up of scattered people. Kevin grew up in Pina Praia, before his family left for Brockton, Massachusetts, a child of the diaspora, playing football wherever he could find it, until a former Cape Verdean captain named Carlos Morais saw him on the street and convinced his father to send him back. He was rejected by Portuguese clubs Casa Pia and Benfica. He found his way to Krasnodar in Russia, where he won the league in 2024–25. Centre-back Roberto Lopes had a completely different path. Born in Dublin to an Irish mother and Cape Verdean father, he was playing for Shamrock Rovers and working in finance when a LinkedIn message arrived in 2018, written in Portuguese, a language he did not speak. Assumed it was spam. A follow-up in English followed nine months later. He immediately said yes. Ten Islands, One Nation, One Dream is the team’s motto. The team’s motto is fleshed out.
Rodrigo Bentanker fouled Telmo Arcanjo outside the box in the 21st minute and earned a yellow card. Pina placed the ball 34 yards from goal, finding a gap in the Uruguayan wall and curling it into the bottom corner. Uruguay’s defense stood still. Pina ran, eyes closed, teammates piled up. It was the second direct free kick awarded in the entire World Cup. He did something similar in AFCON 2024 against Mozambique, a long-range strike from outside the box that few outside Cape Verde would have noticed. He did it again on the biggest stage. After the 0-0 draw with Spain, he told Sport-Express: “I really wanted to score for my daughter. I want to try again – if I score, I will dedicate the goal to her and my wife.” The next game came on Sunday. “I’m very proud,” he said.
Uruguay equalized twice, the second scored six minutes into the first half by Agustin Canobio, with Luis Suarez watching from the stands. It looked decisive. They weren’t. Helio Varela came off the bench, within seconds he latched onto a loose pass from Matthias Olivera and beat Fernando Muslera, who was stuck on his line. Verela is 24 years old, born in Almada, plays for Maccabi Tel Aviv. He had never scored a goal for Cape Verde before. “I had this dream, but I never imagined it would happen,” he said. “To score my first goal for the national team on my World Cup debut is unbelievable. I have no words.”
While scoring, Vozinha kept his shape under Uruguay’s relentless pressure in the second half. He is 40 years old, started playing professionally at 25, spent his career on tour in Angola, Moldova, Cyprus, Slovakia and Portugal. Six days earlier he had made seven saves against Spain and cried at the final whistle. His mother could not get a visa for that match. By Miami she was in the stands. Muslera started in the second goal. Two goalkeepers in their 40s are starting a World Cup match. This has never happened before.
Marcelo Bielsa said afterwards: “In my opinion, the result was well deserved.” Cape Verde coach Pedro Leitao Brito put it another way: “Once you’re on the pitch, a lot of things become the same.”
This is a country of 525,000 people, ten islands in the Atlantic, which did not score a single goal at home in the entire qualifying campaign. When the fixtures were announced in December, few gave them points. They next play Saudi Arabia. Win that and they’re in the knockout stages.