Vozinha was already a legend. It’s just that most of the world outside of Cape Verde didn’t know it yet.
They do now.
No praise would be too high for any of the players who achieved the 2026 World Cup’s most unlikely result so far.
But the hero of the 0-0 draw against Spain was Josimar Jose Evora Dias, better known as Vozinha, the team’s vice-captain and veteran goalkeeper. He turned 40 a couple of weeks before the start of the tournament, which means he is the second-oldest man to make his debut at a World Cup, and the oldest to appear for a team playing for the first time.
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He was man of the match, making seven crucial saves, but perhaps just as important was his stability and calmness, the slightly indefinable qualities that make a leader. If the players were panicking at any stage, it felt like it was Vozinha bringing them down again.
At full time, he burst into tears. His eyes still looked red and misty when he was enveloped in a huge hug by Stopira, the other grand old man of Cape Verdean football, who retired last year but was persuaded to return because of his emotional influence on the squad.
There has been much written about this Cape Verde team, and its success has many fathers. But the picture of those two men embracing — along with captain Ryan Mendes they have been stalwarts throughout the side’s journey over the past decade or so — should be the enduring image of this moment.
“I cried because I grew up with my grandparents and they could not be there,” Vozinha said after the game. “They passed away. My mum could not be here either because of a visa issue, and the money we had to pay for it. We did not manage to do this in time.”
His family not only shaped his life from an early age, but they continue to do so through his name. Well, actually: names.
His birth name was chosen by his father as a tribute to Josimar, the Brazilian right-back who came from nowhere to dazzle at the 1986 World Cup. The original plan was to name the boy Valdano, after the former Real Madrid forward Jorge Valdano, but that wasn’t allowed when he came to be registered. So Josimar it was.
And his nickname comes from the people with whom he lived for much of his childhood, his grandparents. Literally. In Creole, ‘Vozinha’ means ‘Granny’, and he explained to FIFA.com in 2024 how he became known by that name.
“In my area, the other boys were much older, and I’d always be playing with them in the street, getting kicked about a lot,” he said. “That’s because I was very good with my feet and I was competitive and rebellious, I didn’t like losing. I’d get knocked about a lot and whenever I couldn’t get my own back with things like that, I’d go home in a rage, with a face like thunder, and they’d make fun of me, saying I was going off to complain to my grandparents.”
When Vozinha was young, trying to make his way as a footballer on the Cape Verdean island of Sao Vicente, he would often be overlooked by coaches because he was too small. But after a growth spurt in his late teens, he started to get more opportunities.
He didn’t turn professional until his mid-20s, leaving home to play for Angolan side Progresso. From there he had spells in Cyprus, Slovakia, Moldova and Portugal, which is where he now plays, for second-tier side Chaves.
He made his international debut in 2012, and the only player with more caps for Cape Verde is Mendes, and those two are also the only players to appear in all of the major tournaments they have qualified for: four Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), and now the World Cup.
He, along with Stopira and Mendes, is the emotional heart of this Cape Verde team, but he very nearly wasn’t around to help achieve this miracle.
He was actually out of the team for their most recent AFCON qualifying campaign, with the younger Bruno Varela picked instead. Perhaps not coincidentally, they finished bottom of their group and didn’t make it to the tournament in Morocco at the end of 2025. It almost forced Vozinha into a decision.
“It was a very hard time,” he told Goalkeeper.com. “I was thinking of stopping with the national team. All my team-mates talked to me, they encouraged me to stay because of the World Cup. I stayed because of that, because it was my dream, the dream of all of us.”
This result, one of the great upsets in World Cup history, has provided a timely reminder that allowing some of the smaller nations into the tournament does not necessarily mean every game involving them will be walkovers. On another day, perhaps Spain would have taken one of their many chances, but partly thanks to Vozinha’s heroics, they proved minnows can be competitive.
Vozinha will now have to deal with the same thing many people who are thrust into the limelight do: fame. Or at least a certain type of it: before this game he had about 50,000 Instagram followers, but at the time of publishing this article he had gained over 5 million followers.
But for now, he and his team-mates will just enjoy their slice of glory.
“We work in life to have moments like this,” Vozinha said after the game. “I am 40 now but I was not a professional until I was 25. This is a reward for all this journey.
“I would tell 18-year-old Vozinha to be really proud of himself. He worked a lot. To be honest, I never dreamt of stuff like this when I was a kid, but after this game I can tell my younger version that it was all worth it.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Source: Khaleej Times