If you want to trace Cape Verde\u2019s emergence as a soccer power, you might go back to 2009, when the country beat Portugal on its way to a gold medal at the Jogos de Lusofonia.<\/p>\n

The Lusofonia Games were a junior varsity Olympics for remnants of a common empire, an effort by the 12-country Association of Olympic Committees of Portuguese-Speaking Countries to mimic the Commonwealth Games or Jeux de la Francophonie, an upstart competition for former French colonies. On its face, all of these competitions were an experiment in geographically unlikely camaraderie \u2014 could tae kwon do artists from Equatorial Guinea bond with East Timorese ping-pong players? \u2014 but beneath, they were an exercise of raw global sports politics.<\/p>\n

ACOLOP, as the association is known by its Portuguese abbreviation, was created in 2004 and hosted its first, nine-sport Jogos de Lusofonia the next year in Macau, the Chinese region that was a Portuguese colony until 1999. Around the business meetings that accompanied the second games in Lisbon, the conversation among the national Olympic officials who ran ACOLOP focused on Brazil\u2019s effort then underway to claim both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics for Rio de Janeiro, the first in South America. Both successful bids were built on a Portuguese-speaking coalition that crossed the traditional geographical bases within FIFA and the International Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n

The next Lusofonia Games were held in 2014 in Goa, the Indian city where Portuguese traders planted their flag in the 16th century. Then the games stopped, leaving behind a series of canceled plans for follow-up encounters and an archipelago of never-updated web pages.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I think the games ended,\u201d Jo\u00e3o Malha, a Lisbon-based sports communications specialist who served as press officer for the 2009 games, told Blue Light News. \u201cAt least, I\u2019ve never heard anything about them since Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their legacy roars to life again this week, when Cape Verde enters the knockout rounds in its first World Cup, the smallest country ever to reach that stage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This era of competitive Cape Verde soccer \u2014 which has twice reached the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations \u2014 can be traced to the 2009 Lusofonia Games in Lisbon. The under-21 Cape Verdean side began with a bang: a 1-0 victory over host Portugal<\/a>, from which the small Atlantic island nation had won its independence in 1975. It then stampeded through the five-country, round-robin tournament, defeating Mozambique and drawing against Angola en route to the country\u2019s only gold medal, a task made admittedly easier by the fact that Brazil didn\u2019t compete in soccer even as it was the leading medalist across the games.<\/p>\n

For those of us who were at the Jos\u00e9 Gomes Stadium<\/a>, the most eye-catching player on the pitch that month for Cape Verde was Ianique \u201cStopira\u201d Tavares, a 21-year-old left back who rampaged down the opposition flank. Three years later Stopira \u2014 nicknamed for a French great \u2014 moved to a Hungarian club<\/a> where he spent most of his career. He retired in 2023 and then reversed himself a year later so he could help Cape Verde qualify<\/a> for the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Stopira\u2019s return was a success by any measure, marked by critical goals at every stage despite never having been much of a goal-scorer prior to his retirement. His winner helped second-tier Torreense defeat heavyweights Sporting Clube de Portugal in Portugal\u2019s Ta\u00e7a cup final, becoming the first non-top flight club to reach the UEFA Europa League in its current incarnation. And last October, Stopira scored the most celebrated goal in his country\u2019s history \u2014 an extra-time strike which sealed the win over Eswatini<\/a> that sent Cape Verde to a World Cup for the first time.<\/p>\n

Today, the team faces Argentina, and 38-year-old Stopira is likely to start on the bench, as he did in the three group-stage matches. But for at least one more day Stopira\u2019s Cape Verde stands where the Jogos da Lusofonia imagined the country belonged: as a sporting peer to Portugal and Brazil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"