THE OTHER NATIONAL TEAM · CAPE VERDE
During the men’s World Cup, FemGol will trace the history of some of the women’s national teams from the countries taking to the pitch. Because a country’s football doesn’t fit in a single team.
The World Cup is taking a break today.
Cape Verde have been out of it for exactly two weeks. Argentina needed 120 minutes and an own goal in the 111th minute to secure a 3-2 victory over a side that had equalised twice.
It was the end of an extraordinary debut. Cape Verde were the only one of the tournament’s four newcomers to reach the knockout stage and finished second in their group after drawing all three of their matches against Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia.
But Cape Verde’s international summer is not over.
While the men’s team returned from North America, the women began preparing in Praia for the most important competition in their history. On 29 July, they will face Ghana in Casablanca. They will then play Mali on 2 August and Cameroon four days later.
Those will be Cape Verde’s first matches at a Women’s Africa Cup of Nations finals.
They could also mark the beginning of another road to the World Cup.
The top two teams in the group will advance to the quarter-finals. The four semi-finalists will qualify directly for Brazil 2027. The four losing quarter-finalists will then contest two play-off ties, with the winners progressing to the inter-confederation play-offs.
For a national team not yet eight years old, the biggest competition in the game no longer belongs entirely to the realm of imagination.
The first match came in 2018
Cape Verde’s international history began on 16 November 2018.
That day, the women’s team hosted Guinea-Bissau at the Estádio Nacional and lost 1-0. It was not a defeat within a long-established history, but the first match played by a national team created by the Cape Verdean Football Federation earlier that same month.
Their second match came six months later.
On 11 May 2019, Cape Verde faced Guinea-Bissau again, this time at the Estádio Lino Correia in Bissau. They won 2-1. Wendy Silva scored the first goal in the team’s history and Jocilene Semedo struck the winner that secured their first victory.
A little more than seven years will have passed between that afternoon and their continental debut.
Progress was neither linear nor supported by a packed international calendar. Cape Verde had to build a national team while competing, bring together players from the islands and the diaspora and use each regional tournament to close the gap on countries with more established women’s football structures.
In their first appearance at the West African regional championship in 2020, they finished fourth. Three years later, when the tournament was held on the island of Sal, Cape Verde reached the final.
Senegal won the title 1-0, but Cape Verde had gone from playing their first international match to competing for a trophy in less than five years.
Ivânia Moreira, known as Vá, became one of the faces of that progress. The forward scored seven goals during the 2023 regional tournament and was the main attacking threat in a team that had scored twelve times before the final.
Two years later, she would appear again in the match that changed the national team’s history.
Nigeria closed the first door
Cape Verde entered their first Women’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign in 2023.
They overcame Liberia, but the second round placed Nigeria in their way. The Super Falcons won 5-0 in Abuja and also claimed a 2-1 victory in Praia.
The 7-1 aggregate score showed the distance that still separated a recently formed national team from the continent’s historic powerhouse.
Cape Verde did not have to wait long to try again.
In qualifying for the 2026 tournament, they drew 2-2 with Guinea at a neutral venue and won the return leg 4-1 in Praia. The result sent them into a decisive tie against Mali, a national team with far more experience in the competition.
The first leg appeared to repeat a familiar story.
Mali won 0-1 at the Estádio Nacional with a goal in the 81st minute. Four days later, Cape Verde had to overturn the deficit in Bamako, away from home and against opponents who had already appeared at several continental finals.
They did it in less than half an hour.
Larissa Melo opened the scoring in the 14th minute. Ivânia Moreira added the second three minutes later. Eleia Vieira made it three in the 24th.
Cape Verde had travelled to Mali behind in the tie and reached half-time with qualification in their hands.
An own goal extended their lead after the break. Mali responded with two goals, but Cape Verde’s 4-2 victory secured a 4-3 aggregate win and their first qualification for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Nita and a national team built between the islands and the diaspora
The team are coached by Silvéria Nédio, Nita, a former Cape Verde international handball player who turned 60 in January. She will now lead her country into their first Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Alongside her is captain Varsénia da Luz, one of the players who have accompanied the national team’s development from its earliest years.
The construction of the squad also reflects a reality familiar from the men’s team: Cape Verde extends beyond the boundaries of the archipelago.
Of the 23 players named in the preliminary squad for the tournament, only three were listed with Cape Verdean clubs. Most of the others were playing in Portugal, with further representation from France, England, Poland, Malta and Czechia.
The diaspora expands a player pool that remains relatively small and brings together footballers developed in very different competitions.
Nita has nevertheless insisted that women’s football must build its own path rather than exist in the shadow of the men’s team’s achievements. Qualification for the continental finals offers an opportunity to establish its place within the country and demonstrate that the team is not merely a supporting act in somebody else’s story.
The players are not travelling to Morocco simply to make up the numbers either.
Evy Pereira has described the squad as united, determined and convinced that it can achieve “something very beautiful”. Luana Moniz, one of the newcomers introduced during the preparations, was more specific: the objective is to progress beyond the group stage.
It will not be easy. Ghana have played at three World Cups and Cameroon have appeared at two. Mali, meanwhile, are the same opponents Cape Verde had to defeat in order to reach the tournament.
But this team has already learned that a short history does not have to be a small one.
The men reached their first World Cup, drew all three of their group matches, advanced to the knockout stage and forced Argentina to survive 120 minutes.
The women now arrive at their first major tournament after taking a national team created in November 2018 to a place among the sixteen participants at the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Cape Verde already know how to enter a World Cup for the first time without behaving like guests.
On 29 July, the other national team will begin chasing theirs.
