Cabo Verde

Cabo Verde is the smallest nation by population ever to reach the FIFA World Cup, a Blue Sharks program built on a tiny archipelago off West Africa and a deep diaspora across Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. Known for gritty, disciplined defending and punching well above their weight in qualifiers, the Blue Sharks have gone from continental afterthought to one of football's great underdog stories. Their rise has turned the islands into a genuine footballing nation almost overnight.

Cabo Verde's national team began playing shortly after independence from Portugal in 1975, with its first official match in 1978. The Cape Verdean Football Federation was founded in 1982 and joined FIFA and CAF later that decade, but international recognition took time. The Blue Sharks reached the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time in 2013, advancing to the quarter-finals in both 2013 and 2023, and capped their rise by qualifying for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — the smallest country by land area ever to do so.