Cape Verde’s Wild Dressing Room Dance After World Cup Knockout Qualification Says It All

For a few minutes after the final whistle in Houston, nobody on the Cape Verde sideline was sure what their 0-0 draw with Saudi Arabia actually meant. They were already eliminated. Or maybe they were still alive. The answer depended on a scoreline from the other side of Texas.

The players stayed on the pitch, staring at the stadium screens, waiting for Uruguay’s game against Spain to end. Uruguay had been terrible all tournament but so were plenty of teams in this weird group. Nobody knew. And then the news came through. Spain had held on for a 1-0 win. Uruguay was done. And Cape Verde, the tiny island nation with a population smaller than Wichita, was somehow through to the knockout stage of the World Cup.

The reaction was immediate. Grown men in uniforms dropped to their knees. Some fans in the stands were crying. Others were screaming. The players and staff formed a bouncing knot of celebration right there on the grass. Then they took it to the dressing room, where someone started filming. They danced in a circle while chanting a number: one percent. That was supposedly the odds they had been given of getting out of the group.

And here’s the thing. Cape Verde didn’t fluke into this. They earned draws against Spain and Uruguay. Spain. And Uruguay. That’s 0-0 with the group favorites and then a wild 2-2 where they came back from a goal down. They finished with three points which is not a lot but it was one more than both Uruguay and Saudi Arabia managed. So they finished second in Group H and the math worked.

Coach Bubista on facing Argentina

The reward for all of this is a date with the defending champions. Argentina awaits in the Round of 32. Lionel Messi will be on the other side of the field. But the coach, Bubista, did not sound like a man about to get steamrolled.

Nothing is impossible, he said at his press conference. We are proud to be able to play Argentina. From the beginning we said we wanted to show our country to the rest of the world. To play Messi in a knockout stage is excellent for our country regardless of the match result.

There is some real history here too. Cape Verde is now the smallest country by population ever to reach a World Cup knockout round. The archipelago off the coast of West Africa has roughly 500,000 people. That is not a typo. Half a million. And they are going to play Argentina for a spot in the last 16.

The goalkeeper Vozinha, who went viral earlier in the tournament for a ridiculous performance against Spain, summed it up pretty well. He is 40 years old. He has probably played in bigger club stadiums than his entire home country has people. But he said: We are small but we have big hearts. And we are fighters.

Next up is Argentina. The defending champs. The favorites. But Cape Verde already made it further than anybody thought possible. Everything from here is just a bonus.