Roberto Lopes opened LinkedIn one day in 2019 to check his university assignments. There was a strange message, in Portuguese, from someone claiming to represent an African national team. He sent it straight into oblivion. 🗑️
“He didn’t speak Portuguese and used LinkedIn only for university matters”, the Irish defender told the program Footballers Unfiltered. “When I saw that message I thought it was fake, that it was spam”.
But the Cape Verde federation did not give up: they wrote to him again, this time in English. Lopes replied. “From there it all began. It’s crazy to think about it now”, he admitted. He used a translator to communicate, accepted the call-up, and the rest is history. 🌍⚽
And the story makes sense: Cape Verde has barely 500.000 inhabitants and built a World Cup squad without a single player from its local league, tracking down the children and grandchildren of emigrants all across Europe.
On June 15, Roberto Lopes — the one who almost deleted a spam message — stands up to Spain and Lamine Yamal in Atlanta. 🦈🔵