Lopes’ unorthodox route to playing international football has made his progress with his team-mates on the global stage all the sweeter.
“I feel so lucky, it was lucky that I got this opportunity to play for Cape Verde. I didn’t imagine where it would take me. Six, seven years ago now and now we’re going to a World Cup.
“I started out nervous and just wanted to get to know as much as I could about Cape Verde as possible, so I really started to look into my heritage. learn the culture, learn the language as best as I could.
“Every time I got called up, I felt a little bit more Cape Verdean and I was always proud to stick on the jersey.
“Being able to represent my family playing for the national team and being able to put our family name out there at one of the biggest sporting events in the world fills me with great pride and I hope it does likewise with my dad.”
An archipelago of 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean, with a population of just under 525,000 according to the latest figures from the World Bank, Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and first attempted to reach the 2002 World Cup hosted in Japan and South Korea.
The team have punched above their weight in the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in recent years, reaching the quarter-finals on debut in 2013 and again in 2023, and currently sit 70th in the world rankings.
Iceland, who featured at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, is the only country with a smaller population to qualify for the global showpiece.
“I think that straight after the game was just, relief. It was overwhelmed with relief,” Lopes reflected after the win which clinched their passage on Monday.
“We’re there on merit and it’s just an amazing feeling. It’s hard to put into words.
“We really felt we could achieve this and I think off the back of our performance in Afcon we gained some confidence, being able to mix it with some of the top teams in Africa.
“Going down to the last two games knowing it was in our hands was huge for us and in front of our people, our support, there was no better way to do it. We knew we had a chance of making history and we did it.”
