heartbreaking 3-2 defeat by reigning champions Argentina<\/a> but they can leave the United States knowing they have won many hearts.<\/p>\n“Cape Verde have lost, but they’ve won,” said former Scotland international James McFadden on BBC Radio 5 Live. <\/p>\n
“They have shown courage, togetherness, unity and unwavering belief in what they are and what they can do.<\/p>\n
“The story of this tournament is Cape Verde. That is what you want to see in a football side.”<\/p>\n
They came into the tournament ranked 67th in the world, but three group-stage draws – holding European champions Spain 0-0 in their opening game – set up the monumental task of trying to cause one of the biggest upsets the World Cup has ever seen.<\/p>\n
Against Argentina, they went behind to a Messi goal, but came back to level at 1-1 and take the game to extra time. Then they went behind again – before a stunning strike from Cabral levelled again. It was not to be though, with a cruel deflection off Diney Borges from Cristian Romero’s header seeing Argentina through. <\/p>\n
But former England right-back Gary Neville told ITV it was “one of the greatest performances” he had ever seen from an underdog”.<\/p>\n
“They are crying because they are going home,” he added. “They don’t want to go home. They want to be here for the rest of their lives. <\/p>\n
“They want to be here forever. This is a moment that’s probably not going to come back for some of these players. It’s magical but also upsetting.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cape Verde may have been the World Cup’s smallest nation, but they have certainly made a big impact.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-524549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}