Spain and Cape Verde could not be more different off the pitch. Spain, a football powerhouse and 2010 World Cup winners, has about 49.7 million residents and sits third in the FIFA world rankings after dropping one place in Monday’s draw.
Cape Verde, making a memorable World Cup debut, has a population of roughly 491,000–525,000 and has climbed to 62nd in the rankings a jump of three places that left a 65-place gap between the teams before their Group H opener. That wide ranking disparity is the largest in a World Cup match that did not finish with the higher-ranked side victorious. The island nation, a former Portuguese colony made up of 10 islands and five islets about 500 km off West Africa, is largely mountainous and historically was a hub in the transatlantic slave trade. Today more people of Cape Verdean origin live abroad than at home, and remittances are a vital source of foreign currency. Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole are the country’s main languages. With its small population, Cape Verde is the third-smallest nation to qualify for a World Cup, behind 2026 debutants Curaçao and Iceland (2018).
