Cape Verde international: Ignore the call-up email because I don t understand Portuguese, but now I hope the World Cup dream will come true

September 15th An African team Cape Verde is expected to receive World Cup tickets for the first time in history. Cape Verde naturalized international Roberto Lopez, who currently plays for Shamlock, talked about how he got the call and that the team's dream is about to come true in an interview.

The 33-year-old defender was born in Ireland and currently plays for Irish Super League team Shamlock Wandering. He revealed that when he got in touch with Cape Verde coach, he actually didn't understand a word.

Lopez said: "I don't know Portuguese, so I ignored the email. I thought it was a welcome message from LinkedIn." In this way, the call letter written by the head coach of the small island national team was first sank to the sea.

Fortunately, then-head coach Rui Aguas asked him again nine months later - this time in English. Lopez said: "So I dug out the old email and translated it with Google Translate."

That was in 2021, and fortunately this story has a happy ending: now, Lopez has played 39 times for the Cape Verde national team and is expected to lead Cape Verde to the World Cup for the first time.

Because beyond everyone's expectations, this world-ranked 73rd national team remained unbeaten in the African World Cup and led Group D, leading second place Cameroon by 4 points. Regarding the current closeness to qualifying for the World Cup, Lopez said: "For us, that's certainly a dream." Cape Verde has a population of only 427,000, and none of the 27 players in the national team plays in the domestic league, and about half of them are born in other countries. The slogan of life here is "no pressure", but football talents are often lost here: Henrik Larson, for example, could have played for his father's home country Cape Verde instead of Sweden, and similar situations apply to French players Vieira, or Nani and Eliseu, who won the European Cup with Portugal in 2016.

Another Cape Verde international Cabral, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said: "It means a lot to me to be able to play for my country and to make my family happy."