Not all heroes wear capes, but a whole load of them do play for Cape Verde.
The 40-year-old keeper Vozinha, emotionally drained by the end of a performance which demanded unerring concentration levels, an absolute command of his area and no little showboating, at one stage mockingly dribbling the ball back towards his own goal to wind the clock down after an errant touch from Nico Williams.
Steven Moreira, a Colombus Crew utility defender by day, shackler of new Real Madrid signing Marc Cucurella and panicked Spain substitute Lamine Yamal by night.
Pico Lopes, recruited via LinkedIn in an unfathomably Liam Rosenior and Jake Humphrey-themed route to this World Cup, and whose block on Mikel Oyarzabal late on summed up this absurd degree of resistance.
It does a gross disservice to every other Cape Verde player not to mention them by name, not to praise and laud and marvel at them specifically. But really those myriad individual stories are composite parts of a ludicrous team achievement.
Cape Verde, The Third-Smallest Nation In World Cup History™, have held one of the favourites and European champions Spain on their tournament debut.
That they didn’t snatch a victory towards the end did nothing to dull the achievement. This generation has its Pape Bouba Diop moment, its Cameroon toppling Italy in 1990, its North Korea dumping Italy out in 1966. One result has almost entirely justified a 48-team World Cup by itself.
One of the biggest shocks in World Cup history – very possibly the biggest ever in the circumstances – didn’t need a Cape Verde goal. This was a 0-0 win, a thrashing of expectations, a victory in every other sense of the word.
Cape Verde played their first game against a non-African team in 2002. Spain have lost a single World Cup qualifying match since the Blue Sharks’ first such game in April 2000. A preposterous mismatch on paper had no separating factor on the pitch.
It even moved Lee Dixon close to tears. “I have to say, you might hear it in my voice, I’m a bit emotional,” he said, with no discernible change in the tone, volume or consistency of drabness offered on co-commentary over the previous 90 minutes.
Yet even a miserable narration of this glorious feat took nothing away from it. And this was no fortunate, inexplicable draw. Beyond one gilt-edged chance which Ferran Torres steered onto the bar from a few yards out, Spain were restricted to few chances of real quality.
Cape Verde otherwise hounded them, closed off every avenue, repelled any meaningful venture forward. Lopes made 11 clearances and centre-half partner Diney Borges put in five tackles, while the pair of them blocked three shots apiece.
Most remarkable was that Cape Verde made a single foul to Spain’s ten. The tightrope Sidny Cabral placed himself on with a booking for upending Marcos Llorente after 15 minutes was masterfully navigated both by himself and a team which relied on organisation, discipline, commitment and composure rather than any dark arts to conjure this point.
Oyarzabal became the first player in recorded World Cup history – so since 1966 – to play the first half an hour of a game without touching the ball. Yamal briefly electrified the match and the stadium but even he soon realised that there were precious few ways through. Aymeric Laporte channelling Vincent Kompany with a despairing and speculative long-range effort on the hour mark summed things up.
For Spain, the inquisition will begin shortly. They created almost nothing in the second half especially, and while a fresh and fit Yamal and Williams should change the dynamic of this laboured team completely from the start, this was thoroughly uninspiring.
But that is a subplot; the main story belongs to Cape Verde, the early heroes of the 2026 World Cup.
