IN the almost 100-year history of the World Cup, there has never been a result like this. Spain, 2010 champions and favourites to win their second World Cup, stumbled against debutants Cape Verde, the tiny archipelagic country off the coast of Africa.
The European outfit, having some of the best players in the world at their disposal, took pot shots from inside and outside the D for the vast majority of the encounter. But the Blue Sharks, the moniker for their opponents, didn't buckle under the intense pressure. Corners were repelled, the goalkeeper, Vozinha, had become a human wall, while his defenders adopted a siege mentality.
The stats would suggest that the current European champions completely dominated this encounter and were unlucky not to win (xG of 2.06 as compared to 0.04; 3 shots as opposed to three and over 675 accurate passes in comparison to just over 190) but all that would sensationally miss the point.
Spain 0-0 Cape Verde. That sentence alone is enough. The analysis can come later.
Here's a sample about the ridiculousness of this result. An increasingly desperate Spain subbed out Rodri, the Ballon d'Or winner in 2024, for the mercurial abilities of Nico Williams, the speedy left-winger worth over $100mn. They had already bought on Lamine Yamal, the heir apparent to Lionel Messi. Their opponents started centre-back Roberto Lopes, who was recruited to the national team via LinkedIn. When the original message landed on the platform, he thought it was spam. A joke. When the federation approached him a second time months later, he was ready with a yes.
In a microcosm, this is a squad with a lot of players who were born in Europe and elsewhere. Of the group of 26, 14 were born outside the group of islands. Take the case of Dailon Livramento, their forward who tried to chip the Spain goalkeeper from the halfway line. He's one of six players to be born in The Netherlands. The 25-year-old, their leading goalscorer in the qualifying campaign, went to Excelsior's youth academy, a club based in Rotterdam in the Eredivisie. And Rotterdam and the Eredivisie is key to Cape Verde's story. "The city of Rotterdam," The Guardian noted, "is home to 23000 people of Cape Verdean descent. The city alone has produced six players in the current national team."
While there would be a tendency to frame this result through the prism of Spain, this is where modern international football is increasingly headed to. Cape Verde may not be blessed with the same resources as some of the best teams but they still do everything they can control. Just after the turn of the century, there was a clear policy shift to scout and go after players with Cape Verdean heritage. "The process of recruiting dual-nationality players began in about 2002 shortly after the Blue Sharks' first World Cup qualifying campaign had ended in the preliminary round," the same guardian piece noted. Most of the players in this team train and play the game on an everyday basis. One of their full-backs, Sidny Lopes Cabral, was sold for over $10mn earlier this month. In February, he was tracking Vinicius Jr in a Champions League knockout game for Benfica.
Then, there's Vozinha, who was born 11 years after Cape Verde's independence in 1975. He was one of their 16 heroes in Atlanta on Monday afternoon. The second-oldest men's player to make a debut at the World Cup, his real name is Josimar Dias. The one on the back of the shirt — Vozinha — though perhaps is more apt. Voice.
"The nickname is because of my grandparents," he had told FIFA. "I never lived with my parents. When I was born, my father was in the military service and my mother had to work hard for something, so I always grew up with my grandparents." When he moved to Angolan club side Progresso, there was already another keeper by the name of Josimar. So he just decided to go by Vozinha.
In the third minute of first-half stoppage time, he dived to keep out an Aymeric Laporte header from a corner (xG of 0.77). It was a save that took the breath away. In all, he made seven saves, each one raising the belief and fuelling the dreams of one of the smallest countries to ever feature at the quadrennial bash.
When a group of fans from Cape Verde landed in the US to cheer for their nation, they started singing Soraia Ramos's Nha Terra (My Land)'. The lines go like this (when translated): "Look where we're walking, Look where we're standing, We're all over the world, Look where we've gone, We're spread all throughout the world..."
Those lines, now adopted as the unofficial anthem, will resonate longer, harder and further on Monday night.
