Pico's family are all flying home across today/tomorrow
Unclear how many of them will be able to make it back over for Fri; not straightforward with financial & work commitments.
If there's anyone resourceful working in PR for an airline....could be an opportunity there...!
Pico Lopes answers the call from his club manager Stephen Bradley after a historic night for Cape Verde
"Would you believe I got called for doping"
Watch all 104 games from the #FIFAWorldCup on RTÉ
Pico and Philo. Two Crumlin greats showing the world exactly what D12 is made of. 🇮🇪💚
Can Pico Lopes help Cape Verde make history and book a place in the World Cup knockout stages? 🏆🌍
📺 Watch Pico Lopes in action for Cape Verde v Saudi Arabia live on @RTE2 from 12:25am (kick-off at 1am)
#worldcup #capeverde #crumlin #picolopes
@DelaneysDuds@JohnnyLoganBohs Sorry, the Nations League is a route to qualify for the Euros. That’s not a debate.
FIFA rankings have zero say on UEFA competition. UEFA rank for traditions qualifiers based on NL rankings.
Winning games in the NL gets you to the Euros. They are not friendlies.
@JohnnyLoganBohs It is a qualifier yeah. If you top your nations league group you then get entered into the play offs. If you win them you go to the Euros. Additionally massively important towards seeding if we were to qualify.
Grimly fascinated by how RTE dealing with this interminable delay. They have now gone back to showing highlights from the first day of the tournament. Need to send out the bat signal to Kenny Cunningham
Enda Stevens returned to Shamrock Rovers with 26 Ireland caps and 75 Premier League appearances, but there was no ego when he found his route to the first-team blocked by a 20-year-old!
‘I didn't want to come back and be useless or hopeless’
https://t.co/cvsUw8b3Qg
I cannot believe Cape Verde actually convinced this guy to play for them via LinkedIn😭. Monster of a defender.
His mother is Irish, his father is from Cape Verde. He was born and raised in Ireland, and currently the captain of Shamrock Rovers.
He represented Ireland at youth level before switching to Cape Verde.
In 2018, Cape Verde were looking for professional footballers with Cape Verdian heritage and the coach came across Pico Lopes.
He messaged him on LinkedIn to play for them, Lopes was working part time as a Mortgage advisor in a bank then and still playing professional football.
He didn’t respond because the message was in Portuguese and he didn’t understand, he thought it was a spam.
A year later (2019), the coach messaged him again, this time he did it in English. Lopes agreed to play for Cape Verde and the rest is history.
A very good addition to the squad, a pure leader. Ladies and Gentlemen, Pico Lopes.
Cape Verde would have qualified for the World Cup if there had been 32 teams instead of 48
They topped a qualifying group with Cameroon
This is a proper, proper team
@TeamStubHub@StubHub@StubHubAdvocacy@TeamStubHub this post now has over 400k views. Please do your customer right stubhub. @StubHub I'd like my 4 tickets replaced as promised by the FanProtect Guarantee. Order number 629340404
4 tickets to brazil vs haiti
@TeamStubHub this post now has over 250 thousand views..let's make the situation right and replace my 4 tickets as promised under the "FanProtect Guarantee's so I can report back that stubhub stood by their customer and honored their guarantee. I DO NOT want a refund. I want my tickets replaced. Order number 629340404. The game is in 2 days, please get back to me
Thank you to all of the people who have taken the time to like, retweet or comment on my post from last night. To give a brief update StubHub has done absolutely nothing. I thought maybe the momentum of over 1M impressions would catch the attention from somebody who could make things right at @StubHub@TeamStubHub, but so far it's been crickets. The game is now less than 48 hours away. StubHub still has thousands of tickets available for sale to the Brazil vs Haiti game so it's not like this impossible for them to replace my tickets, they just don't want to do it because demand/prices have gone way up since my original purchase. If anyone out there that views this has or knows of anyone with connections at StubHub please reach out to me or share my story. As of now it seems all of my efforts are leading to dead ends. And again, thanks for all of the interactions I actually believe this thing continuing to snowball in X is just about my only chance to have StubHub shamed into doing right by their customer.
Hi @TeamStubHub. My order 629340404 was canceled by the seller for Brazil vs. Haiti - World Cup. Your phone support is forcing a refund, which violates your FanProtect Guarantee. The policy explicitly promises "comparable or better tickets" if an issue arises. There are currently active listings available on your site right now in the Category 3 seating areas. I do not authorize a refund. Please escalate this to a supervisor who can authorize a marketplace fulfillment transfer immediately so I can attend the event.
🇨🇻🇮🇪 Roberto 'Pico' Lopes: the Irish Cape Verde international whose bizarre call-up led to World Cup glory
🔁 The 33-year-old defender, with a broad Irish accent, has been turning out for Cape Verde throughout their qualification cycle
☘ The Shamrock Rovers' skipper was born in the Dublin suburb of Crumlin to an Irish mother and Cape Verdean father, representing the Republic of Ireland as a youth international some 15 years ago
📝 Despite never having visited Cape Verde and spending the entirety of his club career in the League of Ireland, 'Pico' was named in the Cape Verdean squad for the first time in 2019
💻 The approach was not made via traditional means or a club-to-country communication channel, though. Instead, Lopes received a message on his personal LinkedIn profile
🇵🇹 Due to the approach being made initially in Portuguese, which Pico did not speak fluently, he disregarded the message as spam, leaving it in his inbox for nine months
🤝 When the Cape Verdean authorities followed up in English, Pico quickly committed his international future to the land of his father
🌎 The fairytale continued when he played a central role at the heart of Cape Verde's defence, which held tournament favourites Spain to a 0-0 draw. One of the biggest upsets in World Cup history
𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆👉 https://t.co/KFuSAZBKFu
Happy family. Just caught up with Pico’s proud parents Carlos and Judy and his younger brother Jacques (he’s due to go home tomorrow) here in Atlanta
Some good stuff coming from them in the morning on @IndoSport