Ten years ago, Roberto Lopes was filing mortgage paperwork at a Dublin bank, spending his evenings playing part-time football for Bohemians in the League of Ireland. This Monday, the 33-year-old defender is expected to line up for Cape Verde against 2010 world champions Spain in Group H at the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Atlanta.

The story of how Lopes — nicknamed 'Pico' — arrived at this moment is one of the most unlikely in international football. It began not with a scout's report or a training-ground trial, but with a message on LinkedIn.

A message he nearly ignored

In 2019, Rui Aguas, Cape Verde's coach at the time and a former Benfica striker, tracked down Lopes after discovering that his father, Carlos, was from the island nation — a ten-island archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast of Africa. Aguas sent his approach in Portuguese. Lopes, who speaks no Portuguese, assumed it was spam and forgot about it entirely.

Nine months later, Aguas tried again.