A Cape Verde soccer player got all the way to the World Cup, thanks to a LinkedIn message

On LinkedIn, users may find thinkfluencers offering life lessons from mundane events and expired ghost job listings. But on occasion, they might also find the opportunity of a lifetime—as did Roberto “Pico” Lopes in his inbox. The Irish-born banker-turned-soccer player spent his athletic career as a center back playing for Ireland’s Shamrock Rovers, but thanks to a LinkedIn message, he took his career to the international stage. It started in 2019 when Rui Aguas, the head coach of Cape Verde—a small archipelago nation in Africa—found out about Lopes’s ancestry. His father had been born on the island nation, making Lopes eligible to represent Cape Verde under FIFA rules. And like most recruiting efforts nowadays, Aguas turned to LinkedIn to reach out to the player, cold-messaging him in Portuguese, Cape Verde’s official language. But despite the dream proposal to join a national team, the message didn’t quite land as planned. “I thought it was a spam message and I took no notice of it,” Lopes recalled in an interview with BBC Sport. It took nine months for Lopes to respond to the message, when Aguas followed up with a message in English asking if Lopes had considered the offer. Upon translating the original message with Google Translate, Lopes realized he was being offered a position for Cape Verde’s national team. Recruiting for a soccer team through LinkedIn might seem like a rather strange avenue, with the platform mostly associated with corporate and other office jobs. And while Lopes found it strange, too, that didn’t stop him from jumping on board. “[It] was explained to me afterwards that they had difficulty contacting my club, but when I saw the opportunity was there in front of me, I was 100 behind it from the minute one,” Lopes told Reuters. He joined the team in 2019, and while the national team missed out on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, they qualified for the first time to compete at the 2026 World Cup. Open to work Just one game into the tournament, the team is already gaining attention on social media, as Cape Verde—which holds the 67th spot in FIFA’s ranking—tied with Spain, the world’s third best soccer team. An outcome that seemed nearly impossible is bringing the team into the eyes of millions as the 40-year-old goalie saved seven shots from Spain. The newfound fascination with the team has shined a light on Lopes’s strange onboarding to the team, with many finding LinkedIn’s role amusing. “International football scouting through LinkedIn DMs is absolutely unhinged and somehow still more professional than most corporate recruiting processes,” a user said on X. Another added, “Officially, the Cape Verde national team has a higher hiring ratio on LinkedIn than the average company.” And others can already see ahead for what will become an inevitable lesson post on LinkedIn. “Key lesson: don’t ignore your DMs on LinkedIn (he got recruited to the national Cabo Verde team via a couple of LinkedIn messages),” a user said on X. “Probably some lessons for B2B sales as well.”