Cape Verde won the hearts of one and all on their World Cup debut. At the end of their campaign, they earned respect as well. That too, a huge amount of it.
Keeping both Spain and Uruguay at bay to advance farther than the group stage and then giving defending champions Argentina a massive scare in Friday’s Round of 32 clash helped the debutants leave with their heads held really, really high.
Cape Verde and what they have achieved in their maiden appearance certainly go down as the story of this World Cup. It has also proved how a level-playing field sports turns out to be in comparison to other spheres of life.
It’s in sports where even a Lilliputian country can look a mighty nation in the eye and dare to dominate them. In football, the smaller teams have a fair and better scope
of causing major upsets than what other disciplines like tennis and cricket can provide.
Upsets and the Fifa World Cup, in fact, are quite synonymous with each other. In 1990, Diego Maradona and his teammates, reigning champions then, were stung by a rather unheralded band of Cameroonians in their opener. Roger Milla, a toast of Italia ’90, was hugely instrumental in helping Cameroon to a quarter-final finish.
Four years later, a Hristo Stoichkov-inspired Bulgaria stunned Germany in the quarter-finals to eventually finish fourth. Senegal were a sensation in 2002, and so were co-hosts South Korea.
Senegal beat France by a solitary goal on Day I of the 2002 Cup, trumped Sweden in the Round of 16 and progressed to the quarters before losing to Turkey. The South Koreans, on the other hand, had painted that World Cup red and gone a step further following wins over higher-ranked sides like Portugal, the mighty Italy and Spain to advance to the semi-finals.
Outside the World Cup, the lowly-ranked Greece, out of nowhere, had everyone in awe to not just go beyond the group stage but even defeat Portugal in the final to emerge Euro 2004 champions.
Both Bulgaria and Greece failed to build on those performances at the international level. However, these instances of smaller teams overpowering the top-ranked ones do go on to underline football’s competitiveness, which often narrows the gap between the strong and the weaker.
Cape Verde’s success perhaps sits at the very top of all such stories. For a country with a population of just 5,30,000, crossing the group stage of the World Cup and giving the defending champions and thrice winners a run for their money is a monumental achievement.
Sidny Cabral’s 103rd-minute world-class strike that restored parity for the second time in the clash against Lionel Messi’s team proved that Cape Verde did not reach the Round of 32 by accident; they earned it with ambition.
Argentina swatted away the challenges of Algeria, Austria and Jordan in the group stage. But Cape Verde, which completes 51 years of its independence (from Portugal) on Saturday, put up a royal resistance.
“This is a part of growing. This helps us grow, and also shows that the team has a soul,” their manager, Pedro Brito, better known as Bubista, said following the 2-3 loss to Argentina.
“More so than just playing, this was about showing the world our identity. Ours was a team that throughout the entire tournament, for as long as we were here, wanted to play and take on the best teams in the world.
“We played fairly and we stayed on a level-playing field with our opponents. Everyone should thank the players for such a campaign, because they showed what our small country is about.”
Small country? Yes. But in terms of impact, theirs was the biggest.
