A country with roughly 525,000 people, about the population of Tucson, Arizona, now has two points at the FIFA World Cup. Cabo Verde drew Uruguay on June 21, 2026, picking up their second point of the tournament and etching their name deeper into football history.
Kevin Pina made the moment even sweeter by scoring Cabo Verde’s first-ever World Cup goal. For a nation that had never even qualified for the tournament before this cycle, that’s not just a milestone. It’s a monument.
From qualifying shock to World Cup resilience
Cabo Verde’s path to the 2026 World Cup was itself a story worth telling. The island nation, also known as Cape Verde, clinched qualification on October 13, 2025, with a 3-0 victory over Eswatini that sealed first place in their CAF qualifying group.
That result made them the second-smallest nation by population to qualify for a men’s World Cup, trailing only Iceland.
