{"id":57548,"date":"2026-07-28T12:52:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T12:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wafcon-2026-debutants-cape-verde-target-quarter-finals\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T12:52:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T12:52:26","slug":"wafcon-2026-debutants-cape-verde-target-quarter-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wafcon-2026-debutants-cape-verde-target-quarter-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Wafcon 2026: Debutants Cape Verde target quarter-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Martins won her first international cap in the first leg of the Wafcon qualifier against Mali last October, a 1-0 defeat in Praia.<\/p>\n

She travelled to Bamako for the second leg but missed a dramatic match through illness, with the Blue Sharks winning 4-2 after a floodlight failure in the second half.<\/p>\n

“When the final whistle went it was amazing,” she recalled.<\/p>\n

“Everyone was euphoric, screaming how happy we were. A true sisterhood [has] formed.<\/p>\n

“When we got back to Praia loads of locals travelled to the airport to celebrate what we had achieved.”<\/p>\n

It is a big year for football on the Atlantic Ocean archipelago after Cape Verde’s men made their Fifa World Cup debut.<\/p>\n

The team were the underdog story of the tournament,<\/a> surprising most of the football world and winning hearts by reaching the last 32 and giving defending champions Argentina a scare before losing 3-2 after extra time.<\/p>\n

Martins hopes that the country’s Wafcon debut will now play its part in boosting the women’s game on the islands.<\/p>\n

“The popularity (of women’s football) has definitely grown,” she said. “I think we picked up a lot of momentum from the men’s [qualification].<\/p>\n

“In general, any time there’s a sport event going on, the country does well in getting behind any team. On social media, everyone’s being supportive.<\/p>\n

“I hope some of them can come to watch us in Morocco, but if not I’m pretty sure that energy will come all the way across to Morocco.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Martins won her first international cap in the first leg of the Wafcon qualifier against Mali last October, a 1-0 defeat in Praia. She travelled to Bamako for the second leg but missed a dramatic match through illness, with the Blue Sharks winning 4-2 after a floodlight failure in the second half. “When the final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57550,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57548\/revisions\/57550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}