Delirium, despair, pride: with the fans on Cape Verde’s World Cup rollercoaster

Rotterdam is home to 25,000 Cape Verdeans and 1,600 of them gathered in a beer garden to watch an unforgettable game against Argentina

Rotterdam knows how to script a football fairytale. Six players from the Cape Verde side who have lit up the World Cup were born here, nearly 5,000km from their parents’ islands. Five of them played against Argentina, the defending champions, in a bittersweet 3-2 defeat.

After last Saturday’sdraw with Saudi Arabia took Cape Verde into the last 32, the streets of Rotterdam were full of honking cars, flags streaming from the windows and people dancing. This is the city the locals call the 10th island of Cape Verde. The diasporas from Curaçao and Morocco have also set their own corners of Rotterdam alight during this tournament.

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