{"id":535957,"date":"2026-07-06T15:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/535957\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T15:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:44:08","slug":"lopes-welcomed-home-after-cape-verde-world-cup-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/535957\/","title":{"rendered":"Lopes welcomed home after Cape Verde World Cup adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes has arrived back in Dublin following his World Cup heroics with Cape Verde.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old from Crumlin was the only Irish-born player to play at the tournament and featured in every minute of the African side’s matches.<\/p>\n

Cape Verde were knocked out of the competition at the round of 32 stage by Argentina following a 3-2 win last Friday after extra-time<\/a> in what was a nail-biting encounter.<\/p>\n

The Shamrock Rovers skipper has won much praise for his performances throughout the competition.<\/p>\n

After coming up against Lionel Messi in Miami, it’s now back to League of Ireland duties for Lopes with his club Shamrock Rovers.<\/p>\n

It was Cape Verde’s first World Cup appearance, reaching the knockout stage after holding Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia to draws before pushing the defending champions to the limit.<\/p>\n

Their run was one of the biggest surprise stories of the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes has arrived back in Dublin following his World Cup heroics with Cape Verde. The 34-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-535957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535957","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=535957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}