Vozinha defies Spain as Cape Verde mark their World Cup debut with a famous point

Cape Verde could not have dreamed of a better way to announce themselves at a World Cup. One of the smallest nations ever to reach the tournament, the Atlantic islanders travelled to Atlanta, stood in front of the reigning European champions, and refused to budge. Spain threw everything at them and kept finding a 40-year-old goalkeeper in the way of all of it. The 0-0 draw goes down as the greatest result in Cape Verde’s footballing history.

Vozinha builds a wall in Atlanta

Vozinha was the reason Spain went home with nothing. The veteran goalkeeper made seven saves, several of them from close range, and produced the bulk of them in a frantic spell late in the first half. He turned away Ferran Torres, kept out Aymeric Laporte, and watched Torres rattle the crossbar with what was Spain’s clearest opening of the night. When the final whistle blew, Vozinha sank to the turf in tears, named the player of the match on his country’s World Cup debut.

Spain dominate the ball and little else

Luis de la Fuente’s side did almost everything but score. Spain had 27 shots to Cape Verde’s six, kept close to three-quarters of the ball and strung together more than 800 passes, yet only seven of those efforts worked the goalkeeper. Lamine Yamal came off the bench in the second half to try to pick the lock and could not manage it either. De la Fuente admitted afterwards that his team had been well short of the level expected of them, and the expected-goals count, above two for Spain against next to nothing for the islanders, showed how badly the finishing deserted them.

A point that rewrites Cape Verde’s history

This was Cape Verde’s first match at a World Cup, a place they sealed on the final day of African qualifying, and they arrive as the third-smallest nation by population ever to get here, behind Iceland and fellow debutants Curaçao. A country of barely half a million people came within a whisker of an even bigger story when Diney Borges met a late header that Unai Simón had to claw away. A win would have been the shock of the tournament. The draw still felt like one. Spain move on to face Saudi Arabia knowing they laboured against a side nobody gave a prayer, while Cape Verde leave with a point, a clean sheet and a night their islands will talk about for years.

More from our World Cup coverage