A heroic performance by goalkeeper Vozinha has lit up the tournament with a performance that has earned the tiny island an unlikely 0-0 draw with mighty Spain.
The underdogs almost won it at the end, which would have taken it into the realms of fantasy.
Their keeper Vozinha was the hero. He’s 40 years old. He plays in the Portuguese second division. His nickname is “Little Grandma”.
No, we’re not making this up. Josimar José Évora Dias was Gordon Banks, Dino Zoff and Emi Martinez rolled into one today as he defied European champions Spain to deliver one of the greatest ever World Cup shocks.
Cometh the hour, cometh the goalkeeper: add this unlikely hero to the long list of World Cup heroes between the posts.
Vozinha is Portuguese for “voice”, which is his football name, and he has made himself heard with a performance that will reverberate throughout this tournament.
Like thousands of his countrymen, he was in tears at the end. “I cried because I grew up with my grandparents,” said Vozinha after being awarded player of the match.
“Unfortunately, they were not here. They died a few years before. They were everything for me, everything for my life.”
Vozinha was everywhere, diving, punching, clawing at everything the frustrated Spaniards could throw at him.
It will be remembered as one of the great goalkeeping performances, but it was also a team effort backed by what seemed like half the 520,000 population of this West African archipelago.
“Verde” is green in Portuguese, and its 15th-century explorers so named it because of its green vegetation. But there was nothing green about the way they set about the favourites.
The result will send shock waves around football. A nil-nil draw is not normally “off the Richter”, but this one was.
Spain are European champions and tournament favourites. Their players are millionaires.
Cape Verde’s players are a motley collection of journeymen who play in eight different countries.
The atmosphere in the Atlanta Stadium was something else as their blue-clad fans cheered, implored, hooted and beseeched their heroes on.
Between them, they gave this World Cup exactly what it needed – without even a goal being scored.
On Day 5 of 38, it showed that football is winning against all the odds.
Everything was thrown at this World Cup. Rip-off prices, hostile entry rules, heat, distances, crackpot decision makers and lukewarm hosts made us wonder if it would work.
An ongoing war made us wonder if it would even take place.
But it already looks like being a cracker. Football to the rescue again!
We thought it was great that Curacao could even score against Germany, but this was even better.
Yesterday, the island off the coast of South America went down 7-1 in the end, but their goal was enough to bring their nation and coach Dick Advocaat to tears.
This is what the World Cup is all about. Between them, Curacao and Cape Verde have, in successive days, gloriously vindicated the decision to open up the tournament to 48 countries.
We’ve had minnows before, but these two, combined population under a million, are ikan bilis.
And if Curacao were ultimately gobbled by one of the big fish, what their goal did and what Cape Verde’s defiance has done, has given most of Fifa’s 211 countries and territories the most priceless thing of all: these two tiny island specks have given the rest of the planet hope.
Spain may still win the World Cup. They have started slowly before. Other champions have too.
They will dust themselves down and go deep into it. But they may wish they had a pickpocket striker.
Even wonder boy Lamine Yamal couldn’t change the script when he came on late and not completely fit. A sign of early desperation that opponents will note.
Cape Verde? The first thing to note is that they’re not mugs. They’ve been kicking around for a while, punching well above their weight.
Since qualifying for the Africa Nations Cup for the first time in 2013, they’ve been there in 2015, 2021 and 2023. They even reached the quarter-finals in 2013 and 2023.
As expected, they spent almost the entire game camped in their own penalty area, but they dug in, determined.
But it wasn’t just bodies on the line, they also showed why they topped their qualifying group.
And they did it with 23 points and the group included Cameroon, one of Africa’s traditional heavyweights.
Known as the Blue Sharks, other big fish will now be wary of their bite. - FMT
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