{"id":198838,"date":"2025-10-14T06:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T06:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/198838\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T06:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T06:58:07","slug":"cape-verde-clinches-historic-first-qualification-for-fifa-world-cup-football-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/198838\/","title":{"rendered":"Cape Verde clinches historic first qualification for FIFA World Cup | Football News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The island nation, located off the African coast, becomes the second-smallest country to qualify for football\u2019s global showpiece.<\/p>\n

Published On 14 Oct 202514 Oct 2025<\/p>\n

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Cape Verde qualified for the FIFA 2026 World Cup on Monday, beating Eswatini 3-0 in their last group match to top the standings ahead of Cameroon and complete a fairytale campaign.<\/p>\n

The wind-swept West African archipelago overcame first-half nerves to win in the capital, Praia, with second-half goals from Dailon Livramento, Willy Semedo and veteran Stopira, and book a first-ever appearance at the finals.<\/p>\n

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They started two points ahead of Cameroon, whose eight previous World Cup final appearances are the most by an African country. Cape Verde finished Group D on 23 points, four ahead of Cameroon, who were held at home to a goalless draw by Angola.<\/p>\n

Cape Verde rarely played international football some 25 years ago, but now heads to next year\u2019s finals in North America as one of the nine African representatives.<\/p>\n

They join Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Ghana, which have qualified already.<\/p>\n

Livramento took advantage of Eswatini\u2019s failure to clear to steer home the ball from close range three minutes into the second half, while Semedo also had a tap-in for the second six minutes later.<\/p>\n

Stopira, 37, had only come on as a late substitute as an acknowledgement of his long service with the team since 2008, and put a cherry on the cake with a stoppage-time goal.<\/p>\n

The island\u2019s 600,000 inhabitants had been given the day off to support their team, but there was little to cheer in a tentative first half before Livramento scored. After that, the celebrations could not be contained.<\/p>\n

Cape Verde is the second-smallest country to qualify for the World Cup after Iceland, which competed in Russia in 2018.<\/p>\n

Cameroon will likely advance to the playoffs for the four best runners-up across the nine African qualifying groups, but were jeered off in Yaounde after failing to beat Angola, whose 39-year-old goalkeeper, Hugo Marques, made several telling stops.<\/p>\n

\"RobertoLopes celebrates his side\u2019s qualification for the 2026 FIFA World Cup with supporters at Estadio Nacional de Cabo Verde in Praia, Cape Verde [Cristiano Barbosa\/Sportsfile via Getty Images]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The island nation, located off the African coast, becomes the second-smallest country to qualify for football\u2019s global showpiece.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3711,86524,218,59,50,217,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-198838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-africa","tag-cape-verde","tag-football","tag-gb","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}