Rucksack on his back, Roberto “Pico” Lopes was standing on the corner of the narrow walkway way below the stands at the Atlanta stadium on Monday afternoon when the last of Spain’s players tried to make their way home. More than an hour after the final whistle had gone and they still couldn’t get past him, someone quipped. The centre-back from Crumlin reckoned he was “rusty” too here, yet he was at the heart of the greatest moment in Cape Verde’s history, one his coach claimed went far beyond football, and the kind of story only the World Cup can write.
It had taken a little while and a word or two to realise it. In the final minute when Spain had their 11th and last corner, Lopes had looked at the clock and seen that it was close. He had heard the final whistle go, heard the roar as it was confirmed that Cape Verde had held on, undefeated on their tournament debut. He had seen the tears and celebration, family and friends in the stands, As he went down the tunnel he encountered Ray Houghton, scorer of the goal in New York when the Republic of Ireland defeated Italy 32 years ago, and embraced him. It was, he said, “lovely”, but what all this meant hadn’t entirely sunk in yet.
“You’re still in that moment: ‘A point, is it good?’ That’s just the way I am after games: I pick over the bones,” Lopes said. “[Ray] put it into perspective: ‘It’s a point at the World Cup against Spain’. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to enjoy it. Yeah, we can play better – we will probably have opportunities to show that in the next two games – but it’s a clean sheet against one of the best teams in the world.”
That helped; then came the FaceTime call with his Shamrock Rovers teammates, which meant Lopes took a while to appear in the mixed zone to speak to the media, for which he apologised. He arrived wearing a pin badge pinned to his chest of the Irish and Cape Verde flags crossed – a gift from the country’s ambassador in Lisbon. “I think in the dressing room it hit me just what we have achieved here,” he said, and what they had achieved is astonishing. A point, is it good? It is unbelievable.
In their first ever game at the World Cup, the Atlantic archipelago with a population of 600,000 had held the European champions and tournament favourites ranked 65 places higher than them. Never had a gap this big ended in anything other than defeat. Everything about this was extraordinary. Cape Verde’s goalkeeper, Vozinha, is 40 and yet made seven saves, crying afterwards because his mother couldn’t afford the visa bond to come. Their all-time top scorer, Ryan Mendes, making his 99th appearance, is playing in the second division in Turkey. The starting striker, Dailon Livramento, hasn’t scored a club goal in almost two years. And the midfielder who replaced Laros Duarte in the second half is his brother Deroy.
Few though have captured the imagination quite like Lopes, a one-time mortgage adviser who didn’t turn pro until he was 24 and didn’t get an international call until he was 28. Lopes was born and raised in Dublin. His dad, Carlos, was a cruise ship chef from Cape Verde whose boat docked in the city, where he met Judy, Lopes’s mother. His 98-year-old grandad still works the land in São Nicolau, one of the 10 islands. That made him eligible for an international call up, which didn’t mean he ever imagined it. When it came, it was via LinkedIn and at the second attempt – the first time, Lopes had assumed it was spam. He is the first League of Ireland player to reach the World Cup at all, let alone start it like this.
It started with history made, and the kind of performance that had some likening him to Paul McGrath at Giants Stadium. “I don’t think it was that good,” Lopes insisted. “Look, I’m probably a bit rusty: that’s my first 90 minutes since April, so I was happy to get it under my belt.
“At half-time we just said, ‘Good first half,’ because we came in at nil-all but there was still a big job to be done. It’s never over until it’s over: if you start putting your feet up at 90 minutes, that’s where things can change. The last corner they had, I glanced up at the stopwatch. I think there was 30 seconds left and I was just screaming: ‘One more, come on, one more’ and that would be it. And I was just hoping that we’d get a head on it or that Vozinha would come and claim it like he has. I knew if we didn’t concede then, that could be it.”
“We probably wanted to be a bit better on the ball but sometimes you have to take that and you have to suffer and we got rewards in the end,” Lopes continued. “It’s amazing, to get a point and a clean sheet in our first game at a World Cup and against a team like Spain; it’s something we should be proud of and enjoy. It’s history for us.” Vindication, too. If there have been complaints about the expanded format, this said something about the competitive credentials of countries too easily dismissed as unworthy. Cape Verde’s starting XI had players from eight different leagues – those of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France are not among them. Now here they were on the biggest stage and proving they are worthy, the competition a better place for their presence.
“I think this has given an opportunity for every nation to have a crack at the World Cup,” Lopes said. “And things don’t change: teams are [still] here on merit. Just because there are 48 teams here, you still have to qualify. You look at some of the great names that aren’t here, it just goes to show you that it is still a hard path. It is still notoriously difficult to qualify from Africa. If it’s 32 teams or 48 teams or 64 you have to get here on merit, you have to earn it.
“I’m immensely proud: we have some great players in our league and to represent the League of Ireland is huge for me. I have played my whole career there. I started out part-time, then I became full-time. I was chatting to the lads from Shamrock Rovers: a lot of them went out to watch the game and to see the people you lock heads with every day, that really push you ever day and support you, means the most. They’re so happy, they’re so happy, they’re so proud. It feels a bit weird because normally they give me a bit of stick … I am sure that will come as well.”
“It is hard to sum up in words, but for me it is just a story of never giving up,” Lopes said as his teammates arrived, Duarte carrying a giant speaker on wheels, music blasting out. “My first international game was at 28, I will be 34 in two days and I will probably feel every bit of that now after today, and I have played in my first World Cup. Dream, believe, work hard, and anything you love can happen.”