"I copied the message and put it into Google Translate" — that's how Roberto Lopes found out he was wanted by a national team. Cape Verde coach Rui Aguas had messaged him on LinkedIn in 2018, in Portuguese, asking if the Dublin-based part-timer fancied representing the islands. Lopes ignored it for nine months, assuming it was junk mail.
Aguas followed up. This time in English. Lopes translated the original, and within three weeks — birth certificate sourced, passport sorted — he was on a plane to make his international debut against Togo.
From the League of Ireland to the world's biggest stage
At the time, Lopes was working full-time at a Dublin bank while turning out part-time for Shamrock Rovers. Born to an Irish mother and a Cape Verdean father, he hadn't exactly been on the radar of West African football. Aguas found him by searching LinkedIn for eligible players. The whole thing reads like a fever dream — and yet here we are.
Cape Verde opened their first-ever World Cup last week with a 0-0 draw against Spain. Spain. The third-ranked team on the planet, held by a nation sitting 61 places below them in the FIFA rankings. Lopes was on the pitch for it.
"From when I was a young child... they wanted to play at the highest level possible, and for me, it doesn't go any further than the World Cup," he said. Hard to argue with that trajectory.
The gamble that actually paid off
Lopes is careful not to make this sound like an obvious choice in hindsight. "It was risky because I was in a solid job," he admitted in a FIFA video this week. The League of Ireland wasn't exactly offering financial security, and Aguas was asking him to commit to a project with no guaranteed destination.
He initially gave it two years. Seven years later, he's at a World Cup, has built a professional football career, and has commercial partnerships with brands like Intersport Elverys. The two-year experiment never ended.
Cape Verde face Uruguay on June 21 and Saudi Arabia on June 26. After drawing Spain, neither of those fixtures looks unwinnable — and that 0-0 result has quietly made them one of the more interesting outsiders in the group stage markets. A side that can shut out Spain won't simply roll over.
"We've achieved what we wanted to achieve, but we still want more as well." So does the market, it turns out.
