World Cup journey came to an end following a 3-2 defeat<\/a>.<\/p>\nAt the centre of it all has been the Lopes family, whose son was recruited by his father’s homeland via a LinkedIn message.<\/p>\n
Pico Lopes, a captain for Shamrock Rovers and former mortgage adviser from Crumlin, played the full 120 minutes for Cape Verde last night.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Brendan O\u2019Connor programme, Ms Lopes said that the Cape Verde team gave a “tremendous” performance and showed “great character and resilience”.<\/p>\n
“I think you can see they played with great passion and desire, commitment to win it.”<\/p>\n
She said that she knows her son will be disappointed with the result, but that he will come back from that “and be ready to go again”.<\/p>\n
Ms Lopes said her son’s time in the World Cup was a “fairy tale,” but that he has been playing professionally for a decade.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s been playing his professional football career here in Ireland for the last ten years with Rovers\u2026 played consistently at a very high level in all the European games.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019ll be back to business within a few days and he’ll have got over the disappointment of last night, I\u2019m sure.”<\/p>\n
She described the support from home as terrific and said that the family was “over the moon with it”.<\/p>\n
“I think it\u2019s given the whole country and great lift and a buzz. It\u2019s the story of the summer \u2026 almost reminiscent of Italia \u201890.”<\/p>\n
\n
Call for homecoming reception for Pico Lopes<\/p>\n
A homecoming reception for Lopes has been called for following his appearance for Cape Verde in the team\u2019s World Cup debut.<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in Councillor Ciar\u00e1n \u00d3 Meachair said that he has written to the Lord Mayor of Dublin seeking a homecoming for Lopes.<\/p>\n
“The whole country has been behind Pico and his teammates,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Over the past few weeks, we have seen Pico put in exceptional performances as Cape Verde recorded historic results against Saudi Arabia, Uruguay and current European Champions Spain to reach the knockout stage and a game against defending World Champions Argentina, where they fought until the bitter end.<\/p>\n
“Pico has inspired another generation of kids playing grassroots football in Dublin to dream to achieve bigger things,” Mr \u00d3 Meachair said.<\/p>\n
‘Electric’ atmosphere in Crumlin as Pico Lopes stars against Argentina<\/p>\n
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In his native Crumlin, locals gathered last night to watch the match.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, what an achievement,” said one local man who watched the game.<\/p>\n
“You couldn\u2019t ask for any more \u2026 As you can see the atmosphere here was electric.”<\/p>\n
“Absolutely fantastic, gutted for Cape Verde, but what a performance,” said another fan.<\/p>\n
“We couldn\u2019t ask for anything more.<\/p>\n
“If we sat here six weeks ago and thought we were going to play Argentina in the last 32, we\u2019d have taken it, and fallen down to take it.”<\/p>\n
The Government will be engaging with Dublin City Council to decide “how to appropriately” welcome Lopes home, according to Minister of State Charlie McConalogue.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9\u2019s Saturday with Cormac \u00d3 hEadhra, Mr McConalogue said Lopes\u2019 performance in Cape Verde\u2019s loss to Argentina was “phenomenal”.<\/p>\n
“We certainly will be engaging from a Government point of view with Dublin City Council to decide how to appropriately welcome Roberto home.<\/p>\n
“Just to him and his family and his community in Crumlin, what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful moment for their community and for our country,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr McConalogue added: “I think he is phenomenal in relation to how he has represented Ireland through playing for the country of his father.”<\/p>\n
The Fianna F\u00e1il TD said that it was “wonderful” for the League of Ireland to see one of its own on the big stage against Lionel Messi and Argentina.<\/p>\n
“I think it represents the standard we’re seeing in the League of Ireland, and I hope it represents, as well, the first instance of many more League of Ireland players and being able to participate in World Cup in the future,” he said.<\/p>\n
Social Democrats TD Jen Cummins, who is a TD in Lopes\u2019 constituency, said Dublin South Central was “so proud” of the former Bohemian FC player.<\/p>\n
“It’s so positive, but also for Lourdes Celtic, where he originally started playing, they are absolutely delighted and this will definitely boost that,” she added.<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Eoin \u00d3 Broin said the homecoming for Lopes must go ahead and should be a celebration of “what\u2019s really great about this country”.<\/p>\n
“In addition to the incredible achievement for himself and his family, I think it sends a powerful signal to young people from Crumlin and from communities all over the country.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a really powerful, positive message about who we are as a country and about what young people can achieve,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judie Lopes, mother of Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes, has described his appearance in the World Cup for Cape Verde…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-532822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}