Dailon Livramento was lying on the ground. Pico Lopes was looking for his father in the crowd. Stopira was hugging everyone. Steven Moreira didn’t know what to do with himself.
“Right now, I don’t think I know how I feel,” Columbus Crew defender Moreira said, a huge smile on his face that suggested he would soon find out.
But it’s hard to know how to feel when you’ve just helped your country qualify for the World Cup for the first time. Particularly when you are the second smallest nation, after Iceland, to make it to the biggest sporting event on the planet.
Cape Verde, a group of ten islands off the west coast of Africa with a population of around 525,000, did something unlikely.
They needed a win in their final qualifying game against Eswatini to get the job done and lead a group that included Cameroon, a team that has been to 8 of the last 11 World Cups.
Officially, there were around 15 thousand people inside the stadium. But considering how crowded the halls and passages were, the real number was probably higher. Tickets were hard to come by, sold mainly at gas stations and pastry shops in Praia, the capital. Some were available online, specifically for those in the diaspora, but many of these ended up in the hands of relatives in Cape Verde. Regardless of where they bought their tickets, they were tense during a goalless first half: was their big chance slipping away?
All this tension dissipated three minutes after the break, when Livramento forced in a loose ball, at which point everyone in the stadium lost their minds. They were barely coming to their senses six minutes later when Willy Semedo scored the second goal.
In stoppage time, the festivities were capped off perfectly when Stopira, 37 — who retired a few years ago but returned for this campaign — forced a third goal. The team members celebrated with him as if they had scored the goal themselves. “We needed him, so he came back, gave us good vibes, good energy,” said Moreira.
Zito de Pina traveled to Praia from Boston to see the big match. Massachusetts is home to a large Cape Verdean population, and De Pina runs a website dedicated to the country’s sporting exploits, Criolo Sports. He estimates there were 50 people on his flight who were also making the pilgrimage. “I had to be here for this,” he said.
Another fan named Ulysses put qualifying for the World Cup into perspective: “It would be the biggest thing that has ever happened in Cape Verde.” In sport? “At all!”
Cape Verde’s success did not happen by accident.
A few years ago, the country’s football federation made a concerted effort to make the most of its diaspora. There was widespread migration from the islands in the 1960s and 1970s, before it gained independence from Portugal, meaning there are little corners of Cape Verde all over the world.
It is from these corners that a football team emerged. The squad for the game against Eswatini included players born in Portugal, France, Ireland and the Netherlands, as well as Cape Verde. The 25 players play for clubs in 15 different countries.
“We’ve changed a lot,” said Rui Costa, Cape Verde’s technical director.
“The under-17s are doing well; the women’s team can qualify for the CNA,” he said, referring to the Africa Cup of Nations. “We have a game philosophy now. The next step is to bring in young players. Everyone wants to play for Cape Verde now.”
The men’s team has qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations four times, reaching the quarter-finals of the last edition in Ivory Coast, although they did not qualify for this year’s edition in Morocco. But the progress is clear: at the start of the century, Cape Verde was ranked 182nd in the world; now it is the 70th and has already been the 27th.
Money from FIFA helped, allowing the modernization of facilities, and investment from China helped with the construction of the national stadium, the site of the triumph over Eswatini.
Cape Verde had come close to securing qualification a week earlier in a match against Libya in Tripoli that ended in a 3-3 draw. But doing so anywhere other than at home would have felt wrong.
At the headquarters of the Cape Verdean Football Federation, alongside photos of teams from years past, there is a showcase showing the main artifacts from the history of the national team. One of the most prominent items is a pennant from a friendly match played against Georgia earlier this year. There will probably be some slightly more glamorous souvenirs in that closet soon.
“It’s for the people,” said Moreira. “They have been following the team for a long time. I am very proud to make history for them.”
