LinkedIn message – Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes, born and raised in Dublin with Cape Verdean eligibility through his father, joined Cape Verde through a LinkedIn outreach that first arrived in Portuguese. After accepting a follow-up in English, he now faces a decisive group-stage match
MIAMI GARDENS, FL — Eight years ago, Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes opened a LinkedIn message from the Cape Verde Football Association. The note was in Portuguese, and Lopes says he didn’t speak the language. He ignored it.
A year later, the same message arrived again—this time still in Portuguese. Lopes did not respond. Then another message followed, this one in English.
He accepted.
Now, Lopes and his Cape Verdean teammates are one game away from knockout qualification in the nation’s World Cup debut, and the man who once dismissed a message for a simple language mismatch calls the moment “the stuff of dreams.”
“7 years ago, I responded to a LinkedIn message and it brought me to the World Cup,” Lopes said. “It really is the stuff of dreams.”
The path to this group-stage finish runs through his family’s travel and identity. Lopes’ father, Carlos, met his mother Judy in Dublin after a cruise ship he was working on docked there. Lopes was born and raised in Dublin. but his father’s Cape Verdean roots made Lopes eligible to represent the Atlantic archipelago.
Lopes didn’t make his professional debut until 24, and his international debut until 28. He made his Cape Verdean debut in 2019. He later played a crucial part in the 2023 Cape Verde team that made an extraordinary run to the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations.
Those earlier chapters feed into the current momentum. Cape Verde has become part of one of the biggest “Cinderella” narratives in World Cup history, with draws against former champions Spain and Uruguay pushing the country’s fans into anticipation of a knockout game.
The next step is scheduled against Saudi Arabia to finish out the group. A win would guarantee Cape Verde qualification for the next round. A draw may be enough as well.
If Cape Verde advance after that result, they would become the smallest nation to ever compete in a World Cup knockout game.
Lopes said the feeling inside the group matches the excitement outside it—the sense that what’s happening now is not a fluke, but something the team chose to believe in as it built toward this moment.
“You have to dream and you have to believe it can happen,” Lopes said. “I think we’ve done that as a group, and now we’re here we want to believe we can stay a bit longer.”
For Lopes, the story has a sharp, almost personal symmetry: a dream that started with a message he didn’t understand—then became real when the words finally came in a language he could answer.
Roberto Pico Lopes Cape Verde World Cup debut LinkedIn message Saudi Arabia Spain Uruguay draws knockout qualification