Stellar show: Cape Verde enters the knockouts unbeaten.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
The script was written long ago — small island nation, eliminated at the group stage, goes home with a good story. Cape Verde has not read it.
Three games in at the 2026 World Cup, it is unbeaten, through to the knockouts, and nobody is quite sure what to expect from the African nation.
Cape Verde became a FIFA member in 1986. After failing to qualify for the 2002 extravaganza with a loss to Algeria in the Qualifiers, the country made steady progress.
Cape Verde attained its first AFCON qualification in 2013 and came close to sealing a World Cup berth in 2022, only to fall short at the final hurdle due to a last-game draw against Nigeria.
Four years later, it went one better — topping its CAF group ahead of Cameroon to book its tickets for the North American showpiece.
Cape Verde’s first test was against a Spanish side that had dismantled defences on the way to the EURO 2024 title. The Sharks held the Spaniards to a goalless draw through an exemplary display from their 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha. They then came from behind to hold Uruguay 2-2.
Saudi Arabia, too, could not find a way past the Cape Verde defence.
It now has a date with Lionel Messi’s Argentina in the round of 32. A year ago, that sentence would have read as fiction. However, Bubista’s men have spent the last three weeks making the football world question everything it thought it knew. Why stop now?
Published – July 02, 2026 08:55 pm IST
