Twenty-five players from 25 clubs: How it feels to play for Cape Verde’s ‘united nations’

Playing for Cape Verde sounds brilliant.

Granted, the team from a tiny collection of 10 islands, around 400 miles off the coast of west Africa, are not the best in the world. In fact, they are the 73rd-best team in the world if you’re going by the FIFA men’s rankings.

They have never qualified for a World Cup, but are about to play in their fourth Africa Cup of Nations. They qualified for this edition rather handily, confirming their place with a game to spare, and hope to equal or even better their performance in 2013, when they reached the quarter-finals.

But it’s not their quality that makes it seem so appealing, it’s listening to the players talk with such warmth about the experience of being part of the squad.

Which is, in part, because Cape Verde have perhaps the most ‘international’ of all the 32 teams assembling in Ivory Coast. Their 25 players are gathered from 25 different clubs playing in 16 different countries, including but not limited to Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Russia, USA, Spain, France, Italy and Ireland. Only one plays his club football in Cape Verde. There’s even a representative from a nation that doesn’t technically exist: defender Joao Paulo plays for Sheriff Tiraspol, which is officially part of Moldova but are based in Transnistria, a declared autonomous state that isn’t actually recognised by anyone official.

Their pre-AFCON ‘long list’ squad also took in players plying their trade in China, Luxembourg, Denmark and, if you can imagine such a thing, Scotland.

What’s more, those 25 players were born in six different countries: 11 from the islands of Cape Verde itself, five in France, four in the Netherlands, three in Portugal and one each in Ireland and Switzerland. It might have been even more diverse had recent call-ups Kristopher Da Graca (born in Sweden and playing for HJK in Finland) and Tiago Gomes (of Union Saint-Gilloise in his ‘homeland’ of Belgium) made the final cut.

“Cape Verde has a huge diaspora,” explains defender Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes, who was born and raised in Dublin to an Irish mother and Cape Verdean father and played for Ireland Under-18s before committing to Cape Verde. “People would leave for better career opportunities or just better life opportunities. We’re spread out all over the world.”

This is not necessarily uncommon, especially for countries in Africa with extended diasporas and histories of European colonialism. Eight of Ivory Coast’s squad were born elsewhere, for example. Algeria have 14, Morocco a whopping 17.

The slight difference with Cape Verde is the variety of places their squad comes from. All but one of those eight Ivory Coast players were born in France. Algeria’s all come from France and the Netherlands. Morocco is more comparable, with their players coming from four different countries, but it’s unusual for a national team to draw from such a large pool.

Widespread migration from Cape Verde, which until 1975 was part of Portugal, began in the 1960s and ’70s, leading to significant Cape Verdean populations in France, the Netherlands, the USA and, of course, mainland Portugal. Native Cape Verdeans spread and settled and it’s their children — or children’s children — who now form the basis of the football team.

But it took a little while for them to exploit that diaspora. In their first AFCON squad, from 2013, 18 of the 23 were born on the islands. However, in the past decade, they have become more active, as many smaller nations tend to be, about making the most of their widespread resources.

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You can see where the ‘recruitment drive’ began just by looking at when the players in the current squad made their debuts: of the 14 born away from the islands, only two were first called up before 2019. This was largely the work of a former coach, Rui Aguas, who began casting around for fresh diasporic blood when he took the job in 2018. And what do you do when you’re a boss looking for new employees? You get on LinkedIn.

Lopes used to work in a bank and his LinkedIn profile was a relic from that, so when he got a message in Portuguese — a language he didn’t speak at the time — he ignored it.

“Me being as rude and ignorant as ever, I never replied,” he says. “Thankfully, nine months later, he wrote again in English. I did what I should have done the first time and Google Translated the first message, which asked if I would be interested in declaring for Cape Verde. It just snowballed from there.

“This was in 2019, around September. By October I was playing my first game.”

In many respects, Cape Verde are like a modern cosmopolitan club side. While many international teams are comprised of players from similar backgrounds and cultures, Cape Verde are more cosmopolitan.

Four of the AFCON squad come from Dutch backgrounds, including Fortuna Sittard midfielder Deroy Duarte. “It’s something special,” he says about the diversity within the squad. “A lot of players come from different countries, had different upbringings, different environments, but when we’re together it feels like we’ve all been together for a long time.”

“I wish the national team was my club team,” says midfielder Jamiro Monteiro, who was also born and raised in the Netherlands to Cape Verdean parents. “We’re a small country, but Cape Verdeans are everywhere. Everyone comes from different countries, but the most important thing is to understand each other.”

Key to that is language which, in Cape Verde’s case, is Creole — or, more specifically, a Cape Verdean version of Creole that is unique to the islands. It helps them feel like they not only have something in common, but something that nobody else has.

“Creole is the dominant language in the squad,” says Lopes. “In the country, everything is taught in Portuguese, but people speak Creole. It’s very difficult to learn unless you’re around Cape Verdeans because there’s no literature to study.

“It creates a sense of togetherness. When we’re training or in the hotel, there’s always Cape Verdean music playing. You get a sense of the culture and heritage.”

Monteiro adds: “Some players speak English but we’re all learning. We help each other. Pico is a big example: when he got into the team he could only speak English, but now he has passion, he brings everyone together. He’s a leader. And everyone is like that. Even when you come from different places, you bring the energy and the passion and everyone feels each other.”

There’s something else, too. With international teams that feature a significant number of players who were born and raised outside of that country, there is sometimes a fairly lazy idea that they will not be as committed as ‘native’ players. It’s something common in teams like Morocco, who also benefit from a wide diaspora, and tends to come out when things aren’t going well: when people look for scapegoats, it’s easy to settle on the ‘foreign’ players.

But frequently the opposite is true. It certainly seems to be with Cape Verde, the primary reason being that the players’ motivation is not selfish: the reason they are qualified to represent a different nation from where they were born is their parents. Therefore, in most cases, while they are playing for personal satisfaction and even glory, they’re also playing more for their families than themselves. It’s about something bigger than just them.

“Playing for your parents’ country, your family’s country — it hits different,” says Monteiro. “It’s a small place, but it’s big because Cape Verdeans are everywhere. For me, it feels like I was born there. I can’t describe the feeling when I go there: the way people see you and respect you.”

It is a feeling echoed by Duarte, who points out that his family “also get a lot of love and credit because their kids are playing for Cape Verde”. That is doubly so at this AFCON because Deroy’s brother, Laros, was a late call-up to coach Bubista’s squad.

“I played already with him at Sparta Rotterdam,” Deroy says, “but this is something different. Just imagining standing there next to him when the anthem is playing… it will be unbelievable.”

Another motivation for Lopes, Duarte and Monteiro is that this will be their first ‘real’ AFCON: for Duarte that is literally the case, as he will be making his tournament debut, but while Lopes and Monteiro were picked for the last edition in Cameroon, Covid-19 related restrictions meant it was far from a typical international tournament experience.

“Even in the hotel, we couldn’t go to each other’s rooms,” says Monteiro, who will have another motivation as he’s currently a free agent, his contract at San Jose Earthquakes having expired at the end of the last MLS season. “Our families couldn’t come to the hotel to see us. You couldn’t make good contact with each other, you couldn’t be close to each other. I can’t wait.”

It didn’t help that half the squad got food poisoning at not one but two different hotels, but there was a pervading sense that it was an unusual tournament.

“We were lucky that Cameroon were in our group,” says Lopes, “so the stadiums (in those games) were allowed to be at 80 per cent capacity, whereas the rest of them it was 50 per cent. But the reins will be off this time. People are eager to get out and see it all.”

It will also see the international tournament debut for a player familiar to many English viewers. Bebe’s club career has been a slightly strange and wandering one after that spell at Manchester United which made him a cruel punchline and a mainstay in many ‘worst Premier League signings ever’ listicles.

For Cape Verde though, he’s been a key man since making his debut in March 2022, when he scored on his debut. “He’s been an unbelievable asset for us,” says Lopes.

“He has special qualities,” adds Duarte. “His shot is like Cristiano Ronaldo’s. He’s tall, he’s strong, he’s fast, he has good technique. He likes to laugh, he dances. He’s a very active guy in the group. Everybody likes him on and off the pitch.”

There it is again, the sense that the Cape Verde squad is just a really great place to spend some time, but the players are keen to make clear that this won’t just be a big jolly where everyone has a lovely few weeks away.

“We want to make history,” says Duarte. “We want to put Cape Verde more on the map. It will be great if we get to the knockouts, but also to play in a way that the fans will like.”

(Top photo: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images)