Cape Verde are celebrating one of World Cup’s greatest feats. Can they shock Messi and Argentina next?

It was only about a minute. But it probably felt like the longest minute of their lives.

The excruciating void came between the full-time whistle in Houston, where Cape Verde had drawn 0-0 with Saudi Arabia, and confirmation from nearly 1,000 miles away in Guadalajara that the point was enough.

The players didn’t quite know what to do with themselves. They shook hands with the Saudis, wandered around the pitch, then most of the squad gathered around someone’s phone to watch the closing stages of Spain vs Uruguay. Cape Verde needed Uruguay to lose to seal second place in Group H and automatic qualification for the World Cup’s round of 32.

Cheers had gone up earlier in the evening when the big screen relayed that Spain had taken the lead. But they couldn’t be entirely sure that was still the case.

Then it came. Game over in Mexico. Spain 1-0 Uruguay. Cape Verde, the third-smallest nation to reach the World Cup finals, became the smallest to ever reach its knockout phase.

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“I almost wanted to cry,” midfielder Deroy Duarte told reporters after the game, reflecting on that vast chasm of time when Cape Verde were Schrodinger’s knockout team.

“Everyone was just waiting and praying,” he added. “We deserved it so much, because we gave everything. There was so much tension. The joy that came out is something I never felt before, and I hope to feel it again.”

Celebrations followed on the pitch and beyond.

Head coach Bubista waved a huge Cape Verde flag. Winger Garry Rodrigues put on a blue shark (the team’s nickname) mask. This being Texas, black Stetsons appeared from somewhere. The players danced through the post-match interview area, carting the same wall-shaking speaker they partied with after securing qualification back home in Praia last year.

Pico Lopes’ revels were curtailed slightly by being selected for the post-game doping tests, but the Dublin-born defender still found time to answer a videocall from his Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley — who was live on Irish TV at the time.

Pico Lopes answers the call from his club manager Stephen Bradley after a historic night for Cape Verde

“Would you believe I got called for doping”

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— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) June 27, 2026

The Cape Verde story isn’t a fairy tale. There has been too much planning for that. Some luck, too: this is only the second time, since rules were changed to award three points for a win, that a team have qualified for the knockout phase of a World Cup with only three points from the three group games. It’s also the first time since the 1998 tournament a side have qualified in the top two of their group without winning any of their matches.

They also did their best to make things difficult for themselves against Saudi Arabia. Duarte missed a fine chance late on, and Nuno da Costa squirted an effort wide of an open goal in stoppage time. If the Saudis had gone up the other end and scored to put Cape Verde out, they would have only had themselves to blame.

Those things are forgotten now. They are through. And there is scope for more improbable things to happen to these players, particularly the tournament’s newest celebrity, their 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha.

A few days earlier, in the same venue, the crowd roared whenever one particularly beloved player appeared on the big screen, or touched the ball, or really did anything at all. Then it was Cristiano Ronaldo, scoring in his sixth World Cup finals. This time it was Vozinha, playing at his first. The one that has, improbably, made him world famous.

The cult of personality around Cape Verde’s No 1 is nowhere near the levels of Portugal’s No 7. But it’s an illustration of what strange places World Cups can be, enclosed microclimates where the rules of the real world don’t apply for a month or a little more. A previously little-known ‘keeper, who almost retired last year, can receive similar treatment to one of the greatest goalscorers in football history.

“We’re from a small country,” Vozinha told reporters on Friday night. “But we knew we would come here to compete. There’s a lot of quality in our national team. Maybe a lot of you thought that Cape Verdean players don’t have a lot of quality, but we’ve shown we are here to compete.”

That’s why this team have become one of the stories of the tournament, one that neutrals have been drawn to. Walking around NRG Stadium before the game, it was notable how many converts had shown up to support them — Americans, and others with no connection to this little collection of 10 islands just off the west coast of Africa with a population of about 525,000.

“We wanted to go to a game, and these were the cheapest tickets,” said Will, part of a group of three Americans, two Italians and a Welshman who were all clad in Cape Verde gear. “And then, throughout the group phase, we fell in love with them.”

Next? Argentina, Lionel Messi and all, in Miami on Friday. Logic tells you that is where it ends. But there hasn’t been much logic to this story so far.

‘Why not us?’ has been the phrase associated with Mauricio Pochettino and his United States team at this World Cup, but it was very much the theme of Cape Verde’s assessment of their chances against the defending world champions.

“We need to believe we can go on,” said winger Jovane Cabral.

Bubista added: “We have become an example that small countries also can have big objectives, provided they have focus, determination and work with organisation. We have shown that nothing is impossible.”

“I’ve only seen Argentina on television,” said Duarte. “First we will celebrate, and then concentrate on Argentina. We knew it was a possibility to play against them. Obviously, we’d prefer to play a team that is not so good… but we didn’t concede and got a draw against (European champions) Spain so… why not?

“Our first objective was to qualify, then to pass through the group, which we did. Now, it’s another chance to make history.”