How Cape Verde’s Roberto Lopes got a ticket to the World Cup via Linkedin, writes Mark Gleeson.
Back in 2016, when the London-born Ayman Ben Mohamed got a surprise call-up to play for Tunisia, his teammate at Dublin club Bohemians, Roberto Lopes, jokingly suggested he too could become an African international.
At the time, he was just kidding, but a decade later, he is about to compete at the World Cup.
Also London-born, Lopes will be helping Cape Verde as they make their World Cup debut after an extraordinary story of discovery.
Lopes qualifies for Cape Verde through his father, Carlos.
“I hope he’s very proud. He’s the reason that I’m playing for the Cape Verde national team, and to represent him and represent my family at the biggest stage in football is just amazing,” Lopes said.
“I can’t put it into words. I know some people would say a ‘boy from Cumlin, playing in the League of Ireland his whole career that played international football when he was 28 to playing at a World Cup’. But I’m 33 now, I’ll be 34 during it.
“It’s been incredible. I’m probably the luckiest person in the world.”
Certainly, the way Cape Verde stumbled upon Lopes makes that statement true. He was playing at Shamrock Rovers, and with the Dublin club competing in both the Champions League and Europa League, Lopes got a message on his LinkedIn profile that set the ball rolling.
“I set up a profile when I was in college but never really looked at it since. I got a message from the then coach Rui Aguas, but he wrote to me in Portuguese. I just thought it was a spam message and I took no notice of it. And then about nine months later, he messaged me back, saying, ‘Hi Roberto, have you had a chance to consider what I said to you?’.
“I felt so rude for not having replied to him months earlier. I copied the message and put it into Google Translate. And it was basically said that, ‘we’re looking at getting new players into the Cape Verde squad and would you be interested in declaring for Cape Verde?’.
“I was absolutely buzzing with that! I was like, ‘yep, 100% I’d love to be a part of the squad’.”
That kicked off a paperwork trail and a first trip to Marseille where the side was playing a friendly in October 2019 and where Lopes could meet his new teammates for the first time.
It was not going to be easy. Lopes knew no Portuguese. They had not spoken it at home growing up.
But it has become a thrilling adventure for the centre back, who has gone on to win 44 caps for his country.
“I wasn’t eligible to play a competitive game for about a year.” Lopes had one substitute appearance for the Republic of Ireland at Under-18 level and had to formally apply to FIFA to declare for Cape Verde.
“I think I played three minutes at Under-19 level, but the paperwork took the longest time.
“Initially when I went over there, I was so nervous as I was going into a place where I didn’t know if anyone spoke English. It’s like ‘how am I going to introduce myself?’ but once I went over, all the doubts and fears just went away because everyone made me feel so welcome,” Lopes recalls.
“A few more players [than I thought] spoke English. Teammates would make the effort to come up to me and say, ‘how are you getting on, doing okay?’ And when you’re on the pitch, football has its own language.”
The island archipelago has a population of just over half a million, but most of the team are, like Lopes, drawn from the diaspora, particularly from Portugal and the Netherlands.
They now look ahead to take on Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia at the finals.
