The former bank employee who got a LinkedIn direct message to play on the Cape Verde national team at the 2026 World Cup

Cape Verde pulled off one of the surprise results of the group stage, holding Spain to a goalless draw on their World Cup debut.

It brought the Blue Sharks a lot of exposure - particularly for one player, who has a highly unusual backstory.

Center-back Roberto Lopes is one of the most experienced members of Budista’s squad, and he wasn’t even born in Cape Verde. Lopes, or Pico as he is known to his teammates, was born and raised 4,500 kilometers further north in Dublin, Ireland.

But back in 2018, a simple joke with one of his Shamrock Rovers teammates at set off a chain of events that eventually led to him being called up by Cape Verde for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations. And the call could’ve come years earlier… if he hadn’t mistaken a LinkedIn message for spam written in a language he didn’t understand...

Lopes’ reaction was nothing out of the ordinary. As expected, he chose to ignore the message, which was actually sent by then-Cape Verde head coach Rui Águas in 2018. Águas made the move to recruit the ex-bank employee for a tiny island nation in the Atlantic Ocean from where he was born after he discovered that Lopes’ father, Carlos, was from Cape Verde.

From Dublin kid to pro footballer

Lopes always dreamed of becoming a professional player, and his talent backed it up. He made his debut for Bohemians at just 18. There, he became close friends with Ayman Ben Mohamed — born in England to an Irish mother and Tunisian father. Ayman’s strong performances earned him a call‑up to Tunisia, and during a TV interview, Lopes jumped in with a joke that would come back years later.

He teased that he, too, could play for an African national team because his father had Cape Verdean roots. A journalist standing behind the camera scribbled that detail into a notebook — a detail that would eventually change Lopes’ life.

The message he almost ignored

Fast‑forward to 2016. Lopes signed with Shamrock Rovers, where he played in Champions League and Europa League qualifiers and eventually became an Irish league champion. But despite his form, no national team call came — not from Ireland, and not from Cape Verde either.

What he didn’t know was that Rui Águas, Cape Verde’s national team coach at the time, had been trying to reach him. Águas sent him a message on LinkedIn asking if he’d be interested in representing Cape Verde.

There was just one problem: Lopes barely used LinkedIn. He had created the account back in college and rarely checked it. By sheer chance he signed in and finally saw the unopened message — written in Portuguese. He assumed it was spam and ignored it.

Águas followed up: “Hi Roberto, have you had a chance to think about what I mentioned?”

This time, Lopes copied the message into Google Translate… and realized it wasn’t spam at all. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.

A dream he didn’t know was waiting

Lopes contacted the Irish federation to sort out his eligibility, and soon after, he officially became a Cape Verde international. The defender made his senior debut in a friendly against Togo in October 2019. “I exploded with happiness. I was 100% excited. I obviously said yes,” Lopes recalled.

Since then, he’s earned multiple individual honors and become a key figure for the team, having made 46 appearances for the senior side, played in the Africa Cup of Nations and now the biggest prize - played at the World Cup.

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