Wow, just wow. At 1.57pm Atlanta time, 3,291 miles from home, the final whistle went on Cape Verde’s first game in a World Cup finals tournament – and they had only gone and done it.
What they had done was madness: a tiny nation, a debutant, had held one of the favourites, Spain, the European champions, to a 0-0 draw. Bubista, the coach who had led them here, had said he wanted the world to see who and what they are – and, boy, did they see. Qualification, he had insisted, was more than football, it was music, it was culture, it was everything. So what was this? This was wonderful. What a moment and what a noise greeted the moment when the impossible had become real.
An Atlantic archipelago of 600,000 people. A Shamrock Rovers centre back from Crumlin, Dublin, learning Creole and found on LinkedIn. A 40-year-old goalkeeper from Portugal’s second division, another Josimar leaving his mark on the history of this competition and a million minds, left in tears at the end and to be talked about for generations. All of them, each and every one. They had come to the US, faced Spain, and resisted them, their bodies on the line and their hearts on their sleeves. Even the introduction of Lamine Yamal, the teenaged icon cast as Spain’s saviour, couldn’t defeat them.
Cape Verde got a point from Atlanta but they got a whole lot more. They might have literally got more. As this game entered the final, dramatic, tense minutes with the score at 0-0, it was they, not Spain, who actually had the best chances. Amazingly, on 90 minutes Diney Borges leapt inside the Spain area, rising to meet a header – and his moment of immortality – only for Unai Simón to save. Three minutes later Ryan Mendes had his opportunity, too. And Dani Olmo had to block from Kevin Pina, an incredible story on the edge of getting even more absurd.
But this will live for ever anyway, a draw of pure joy. And if those were huge moments, images that will be in the imagination a long time, so too was the astonishing block from Pico Lopes, diving in on 88 minutes to deny Olmo. Lopes was born and raised in Ireland. His dad Carlos, a cruise ship chef whose boat docked in Dublin where he met Judy, was in the stands here with her and Pico’s two brothers. His 98‑year‑old granddad, who still works the land, watched from Sao Nicolao. His wife’s family had come by campervan. How proud they must feel, how incredible his story is.
It’s been told, but it still blows your mind, and it had another chapter written here. A former mortgage adviser, bored with the business, a part-time amateur who left Bohemians for Shamrock Rovers, he was contacted on LinkedIn and ignored the first message – it was in a language he doesn’t understand and he assumed it was spam. Now he had made history. Behind him, the 40-year-old Josimar José Évora Dias, “Vozinha”, had too. They all had, what heroes they have become: a starting XI that plays in eight different leagues, 26 men from outside the elite. Nothing does stories like football, like the World Cup.
Spain had 24 shots and could not find a way through, but this wasn’t a fluke, far from it. Bubista’s players had worked for it, deserved it from the very start when that countdown to kick off came and – one minute and six seconds later than scheduled – Dailon Livramento got the country’s first touch at a World Cup finals. They had been told that this wasn’t their place. Oh, but it is. And so it began, an act of rebellion and resistance. 90 long minutes with a huge reward waiting at the end.
Bubista has said his team would have the courage to attack but also that they would have to defend well: that was the priority here, and they did so extremely well. It took 14 minutes for Pedri to have Spain’s first shot, then Pau Cubarsi struck a shot wide and that was pretty much that. At the other end Mendes lifted over Gavi and saw his shot blocked by Marc Cucurella, Livramento shot from halfway, and Jovane Cabral curled wide.
Spain did improve and as the half came towards a close the chances appeared, which was when Vozinha did too. The first of a series of saves came from Mikel Oyarzabal’s header after Ferran Torres hit the bar. He stopped from Torres too, and from an Aymeric Laporte header. And although Spain’s shot count rose at the start of the second half, eventually reaching 27, it just wasn’t happening. Instead, history was.
Time was getting on, and on, and on. And, to the surprise of everyone, it took until 70 minutes for Lamine Yamal to be introduced, his appearance changing the mood but not history. Cape Verde did that, music for the world to hear.
