Cape Verde’s Sidny Lopes Cabral: ‘If you’re like “oh, it’s Messi”, you’re gonna lose your mind’

The full-back on defying the odds, dealing with racism, Cape Verde’s party people and taking on Lionel Messi

“When we saw 1%, we just laughed.” Cape Verde liked those odds, and so did Sidny Lopes Cabral. “They gave us a 1% chance of reaching the next round, but we showed how big 1% is,” the defender says. He has always known there was a chance however small it looked, in Rotterdam or anywhere: in Germany, where he froze in the fifth tier earning £850 a month, using bin bags for curtains, and in America too. His mates told him he was crazy; he told his mum not to worry. “I always told them, ‘hey, I’m going to be a great football player: I’m gonna reach the top.’ And I’m living in my dream now.”

Now, an island of 300,000 people, the story of this World Cup, face the champions. And Lopes Cabral, the left-back and the second-youngest player in the squad at 23, faces arguably the best footballer of all time. “I hope I get some nice pictures of me standing next to him,” Lopes Cabral says. “I have no words to describe how I feel, how we all do. Back in Cape Verde, every game there are parties. In the Netherlands, in France, everywhere Cape Verdean people live. In Rotterdam it’s crazy.”

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