FIFA 2026: The LinkedIn report that took Roberto Lopes from Dublin bank to Cape Verde | Today’s news
A seemingly random LinkedIn message in 2018 changed the world for Robert Lopes, a Dublin bank employee who played part-time for Irish football club Shamrock Rovers.
Lopes, nicknamed “Pico”, was contacted by Cape Verde national team coach Rui Aguas via LinkedIn. He was looking for suitable footballers for the team of a small West African island nation.
But Lopes, born to an Irish mother and Cape Verdean father, assumed the message was spam and ignored it. Aguas called again nine months later, this time in English, asking if Pico had seen his earlier message.
Lopes told BBC Sport that he copied the original message and pasted it into Google Translate. Basically it said, “We are looking into recruiting new players for the Cape Verde team and would you be interested in applying for Cape Verde?”
“I absolutely enjoyed it. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’d 100% like to be part of the team,'” he added.
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Roberto Lopes, Cape Verde make their FIFA debut
Roberto Lopes struggled to get documents from his father, such as a birth certificate and passport, and was on a plane for three weeks to make his international debut against Togo.
Now, after more than seven years, Cape Verde and Pico are making their FIFA World Cup debut.
As Cape Verde developed from footballing underdogs to the biggest surprise for the 2026 World Cup, Pico remained a permanent part of the team.
The nation made their tournament debut last week with a remarkable 0-0 draw against heavyweights Spain, closing a huge gap of 61 places in the FIFA world rankings. It’s a milestone Lopes admits he’s still trying to process.
“Ever since I was a little kid and I imagine every budding footballer when they were young wanted to play at the highest possible level and for me it doesn’t go any further than the World Cup,” Lopes said.
“To be able to represent my family playing for the national team and to put our family name out there at one of the biggest sporting events in the world fills me with great pride.”
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Leaving banking for football was actually ‘risky’: Pico
Pico said accepting the challenge was actually “risky” because there was no guarantee the gamble would pay off.
“It was risky because I had a solid job,” Lopes recalled in a FIFA video released this week. “Where our league was at that time, there wasn’t a lot of certainty in terms of a career in football, so when he (Aguas) talked to me about his plan, his ideas and what he had going forward, I had to be a part of it.”
At first, Lopes saw the Aguas offer as a short-term experiment, but what followed went far beyond that horizon. “I would say we have achieved what we set out to achieve, but we still want more.
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The risk ultimately paid off — as Microsoft executive vice president Ryan Roslansky, who oversees LinkedIn, says: “A big win for recruiters who don’t give up on a great candidate.”
The key move took him from a corporate banking role in Dublin to the global sporting scene, allowing him to establish a professional football career while securing valuable commercial support with brands including Intersport Elverys.
