Aha! Vozinha!
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
Vozinha’s path was never designed for fairy tales. Before professional football, he worked as an electrician. He signed his first professional contract only at 26, then moved through Angola, Moldova, Cyprus and Portugal, away from the glitter of football’s richest leagues. At 40, he arrived at the World Cup without the protection of celebrity.
By MJ Vijayan in Delhi
Is it in the Caribbean?”
“Who on earth knew these countries existed?”
“Is it Cape Verde or Cabo Verde?”
“Good for these remote island countries that through FIFA World Cup, they will get to see the world at least!”
All these questions and more floated among football fanatics around the world when countries like the West African Cabo Verde and even the Caribbean island Curacao showed up for the FIFA World Cup Party in the North American continent!
The first answer is simple. It is Cabo Verde.
In 2013, the country formally asked the United Nations that its name should no longer be translated as Cape Verde. For a people shaped by slavery, forced migration, drought, diaspora and colonial memory, even the name is a question of dignity.
The second answer is more beautiful. Cabo Verde did not come to the World Cup to “see the world”. It came to make the world see Cabo Verde.
A country of roughly half-a-million people, spread across volcanic islands off the coast of West Africa, it entered this World Cup ranked 67th. It had not even played a World Cup qualifier before the start of this century. Yet. it drew with Spain and Uruguay, finished second in the group, and then took Argentina, the reigning champions, into extra time before falling 3-2 through an own goal.
Even in defeat, they did not lose in regulation time.
This was not an accident.
Coach Bubista’s team was built as a footballing map of the scattered Cabo Verdean people. Reuters counted 11 players from the islands, six born in the Netherlands, four in Portugal, three in France, one in Ireland and one in the United States. The Blue Sharks were not just a national team; they were a return of the diaspora.
The most charming story in that return is Roberto “Pico” Lopes. Born in Dublin to an Irish mother and Cabo Verdean father, he was playing in Ireland when a message arrived on LinkedIn from the Cabo Verde football authorities. It was in Portuguese. He thought it was spam and ignored it.
Nine months later, a follow-up came in English. He translated the first message and realised that a country he belonged to through his father was asking him to play international football. A LinkedIn message became a passport to the World Cup.
But make no mistake; the face of this campaign is Vozinha or Josimar José Évora Dias, born in 1986, during the World Cup of Maradona’s Argentina. His father had wanted to call him Valdano, after Jorge Valdano of Argentina, but the authorities refused. So he was named Josimar, after the Brazilian full-back who shone in that same World Cup.
Even before he became a footballer, the child already carried Brazil and Argentina in his name.
‘Vozinha’ came from another place: the home. He was raised by his grandparents because his father was in military service and his mother had to work. The nickname, loosely meaning “little grandma”, first embarrassed him. Later, when he went to Angola and found another goalkeeper named Josimar, he refused to become Josimar II. If Cabo Verde knew him as Vozinha, he would carry that name into the world.
And what a world he carried it into!
Vozinha’s path was never designed for fairy tales. Before professional football, he worked as an electrician. He signed his first professional contract only at 26, then moved through Angola, Moldova, Cyprus and Portugal, away from the glitter of football’s richest leagues. At 40, he arrived at the World Cup without the protection of celebrity.
Then came the Spain game.
Save after save, he made Cabo Verde’s first World Cup match a 0-0 statement.
His mother, Ana Candida Evora, reportedly missed the Spain match because she could not afford the heavy travel bond linked to entry into the United States. When that fee was waived, she reached the stands later in the campaign.
His father too became part of the tournament’s human archive. Stopped by a reporter outside the stadium, he turned out to be Vozinha’s father and said of watching his son: “I’m prouder than anyone else. It’s phenomenal—there’s no other word for it. I was blessed by God.”
Against Argentina, Vozinha could not stop the final heartbreak. But he stopped Messi enough times to make the world hold its breath.
After the match, Messi hugged him and told him, “You are great. Your people should be proud of you.”
Then came the small scene that explains football better than statistics. Cabo Verde’s players fell to the grass, broken by the manner of defeat. Vozinha went around lifting them up. The oldest man in the side became the one telling the youngest nation in the tournament not to lower its head.
That is why the applause from Argentinian fans mattered. They know football’s cruelty. They also know its labour. They know that a small team can carry a country, a people, a migration route, a mother at home, a father in the stands and a goalkeeper named after football memories from Brazil and Argentina.
No global north footballing narrative is going to talk about Iran’s brave battle against all odds to just play in this antagonist World Cup, with even FIFA going against them. No one will feel for the effort it takes to play when a war for elimination is launched on them by the elites of the world.
After the two major upsets by the European countries against Brazil and Mexico in the round of 16, it is clear that Norway’s fans won’t cry for Brazil, nor will England feel even remotely for the host country whose aspirations of the World Cup they put down. But the Argentinian fans would feel for Cabo Verde, they will cry for the island nation; they will tell the world the painstaking effort it takes to play football!
They will write sagas about Vozinha and the Davids of Africa who dared to challenge the champions and almost got them down on their knees! That is why football is not just another sport; it is a people’s saga written in flesh, blood, sweat and solidarity.
MJ Vijayan, a football fanatic, is a socio-political analyst and activist-writer, based in New Delhi