Roberto Lopes: Cabo Verde’s hero vs Spain was recruited through LinkedIn | Football News
3 min readJun 16, 2026 06:22 AM IST LinkedIn is a social media platform one would associate more with Football agents but not professional football players. However, 33-year-old Roberto Lopes, who plays as a defender for Shamrock Rovers in Ireland was recruited through LinkedIn to play for Cape Verde. On Monday, he made the crucial block in the 89th minute as the debutant island nation held European champions Spain to a 0-0 draw. “It is a crazy story of how I started in international football. Basically during college, I set up a LinkedIn account, connected with a few friends and left it in the dark for a few years,” Lopes told FIFPro. “Then one day, I got a message from the manager of the Cape Verde team at the time, Rui Aguas. He dropped a welcome message in Portuguese, which I didn’t speak at the time. I just assumed it was like, “thanks for connecting with me, message or spam.” Cape Verde’s Roberto @PicoLopes almost missed out on international football because he ignored a LinkedIn …

