Read 4 minutes4 July 2026 02:40 PM IST
It may be the biggest night for the Duarte family, but now it will be accompanied by a bittersweet feeling. Brothers taking to the field together in a FIFA World Cup game is a special occasion and it was no different for Cape Verde’s Deroy and Laros Duarte against world champions Argentina in Miami on Friday.
The brothers saw action in each of their group games, but one or both came off the bench. But against Lionel Messi and Co., coach Bubista saw fit to start both brothers in midfield. The evening was further brightened when Deroy saved not one but two Argentines for Cape Verde’s first equaliser, including goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez.
The brothers didn’t stay on the pitch until the end of the game – Laros came on in the 67th minute, when the game was tied 1-1, and Deroy in the 100th minute, when the manager brought on Yannick Semedo to chase another equalizer before Lisandro Martinez put the world champions ahead for a second time. The move would have seemed justified when Sidney Lopes Cabral fired in an eye-catching curler to make it 2-2. The Duarte brothers believed this could be their day, but fate had other ideas.
Fate, in fact, often did not give them an easy deal. He was raised in Rotterdam, Netherlands by single mother Maria da Cruz, who took him to local academies. His father, Mario ‘Mica’ Duarte, is a former footballer originally from Sao Nocolau, Cape Verde. In fact the brothers represented the Dutch at youth level.
“It feels like a dream,” Maria was quoted as saying by dutchnews.nl ahead of the Round of 32 game. In fact, she was in the USA to watch Cape Verde’s first two matches against Spain and Uruguay before returning with her eldest son Lajoyce before the game against Saudi Arabia, for which Deroy Wade was named man of the match for his outstanding performance in defensive midfield. In the final minute of that game, Laros – the older of the football brothers by nearly two and a half years – was sent clear on goal for a chance to seal his country’s first World Cup, but his shot was parried by Saudi goalkeeper Mohammed Al-Owais.
“We assumed they would play three matches, so if we get to see two of them, that’s great,” she said. “My son could only get time off from work for two games and I didn’t want to be in America by myself. So we came back,” she said, hurrying for her second trip to the US three weeks later as her children take on the world champion.
“My boys always wanted to play against the best players. It was a dream come true for them. Losing is part of the game and losing to the best players in the world is not a shame. No one thought they would advance, but after the draw against Spain, the boys thought: we can do it.”
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Maria remembers how she juggled work and her sons’ football ambitions from the time Laros joined the Sparta club when he was five years old. “I worked part-time, so I would come home, cook dinner before coming home from school at 3.30pm, pick them up and go straight to Sparta,” she said.
“People ask how I managed it all these years and I say: ‘It just becomes your life’. You see they have talent and as long as they want to enjoy it and continue, you go with them because all you can do as a parent is support them and take them where they want to go. I didn’t have that Cape Verdean social life because I was always busy at weekends and training for matches.”
A soccer mom admits her sons get nervous when they play.
“When they’re not playing, I can just watch the game, but when my kids are playing, I’m chasing every ball. It’s very stressful.”