Sun: Cape Verde national team recruits foreign players through LinkedIn, and now they are close to entering the World Cup

October 8 The Sun reported that the Cape Verde national team recruited players on LinkedIn.

Robatu Lopez is nicknamed "Pico". For him, an impossible dream is about to become a reality at the age of 33. Born in Dublin, Pico spent 14 years in the Irish League, initially with the Bohemian and then played for Shamlock Rangers since 2017. The appearance of the Irish youth team in 2011 seems to be the limit of his international career.

Until his then-coach found out about his LinkedIn profile, which indicated his mother from Ireland and his Cape Verde-born father.

The centre-back recalled: "I created a LinkedIn profile in college, but I basically didn't see it again."

"Suddenly, I received a message from coach Rui Aguas at the time, but he wrote it in Portuguese. I thought it was spam, so I ignored it."

"About nine months later, he sent me a message and said, 'Hi, have you had the chance to consider what I said to you before?'"

"I copied the information to Google Translate. The content was basically that we were considering getting new players to join Cape Verde. Are you interested in declaring playing for Cape Verde?"

"I was extremely excited about it! I thought, yes, 100% I would like to be a member of the team."

Six years have passed, and Pico has played 38 times for the team. Now, he and his teammates are only one victory away from becoming the second smallest country to advance to the World Cup finals after Iceland in 2018. Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colonial island located on the west coast of Africa, has a population of only 600,000. It did not join FIFA until 1986 and participated in the World Cup qualifiers for the first time in 2002.

But 55-year-old head coach Bubista, using Cape Verde diaspora to develop a recruiting strategy and recruit Pico and other players, was successful. In Bubista's ordinary player career, the most noteworthy thing is that he made two appearances for the Spanish League Two team Badajoz 30 years ago.

Six players in his roster are of Dutch descent and two champions. Tony Araujo, a U.S. recruitment expert and agent who worked with the team, explained: "The Cape Verde Football Association has developed a new strategy to identify and recruit talents in the huge Cape Verde community."

"They first qualified for the African Cup of Nations finals in 2013, and with recent successes, more and more players in Europe tend to choose to play for Cape Verde."