The small African island nation of Cape Verde qualified for the 2026 World Cup ahead of Cameroon by signing one of their best players on LinkedIn in Dublin-born defender Pico López.
A small African island nation has qualified for next year’s World Cup after a successful recruitment drive on professional networking site LinkedIn.
Cape Verde will become the second smallest country ever to qualify for the final. Incredibly, they tracked the player on the professional networking site LinkedIn and nabbed one of the best. Last night’s win started a huge party and no one celebrated more than Shamrock Rovers star Pico Lopez.
López, 33, said he received a message on LinkedIn asking if he was eligible to represent Cape Verde, but he initially ignored it. In the end, he answered – a decision that would change the life of the Dublin-born centre-back.
“I was very paranoid,” he said. “Growing up in an area with a lot of prank calls, I may have been too cautious. I swallowed my pride and thankfully made the call at just the right time.”
“My father is from the island of San Nicolau. He left when he was 16. People tend to look for opportunities and football abroad. There seems to be a mass migration from the country.”
“We’re all over the world. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we come together.”
When Lopez went to meet the team in 2019, about a month after the first contact, his biggest fear was about communication. His main languages were Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole, neither of which he spoke.
“I was nervous about it, but when I got there, everyone was great. They came and spoke to me, and anyone who spoke English spoke to me in English and tried to help me in any way they could.”
“It still gave me the courage to learn the language. When the team is together we speak Creole, which is great. After that it’s just football, it’s a universal language.”
“Right now we have a large French squad, a Dutch squad and a lot of players who also play in Portugal. We definitely have some bilingual and trilingual players. I’m aiming to join them!”
They surpassed African powerhouse Cameroon, led by Manchester United’s Brian Mbeumo, in their group and booked a place in the 2026 final, which will be played in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Cape Verde joined FIFA in 1986 and appeared in World Cup qualifying for the first time prior to the 2002 tournament.
Merseyside has three times as many people as Cape Verde, which was a Portuguese colony until 1975. Approximately 550,000 people call this island home, but Iceland, with a population of 300,000, is the only country with a smaller population to make it to the finals (2018).
The team, known as the Blue Sharks, secured top spot in their African qualifying group with a 3-0 home victory over Eswatini.
With just 12 teams in the domestic top flight, the Blue Sharks have relied heavily on foreign-based players and the diaspora to improve their footballing fortunes in recent years.
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