Spam in '18. Spain in '26.

In 2018 a stranger messaged Roberto Lopes on LinkedIn, in Portuguese. The Dublin-born Shamrock Rovers defender assumed it was spam and ignored it. Nine months later the man wrote again, in English — he was Cape Verde's coach, and Lopes qualified through his father, who'd left the islands at 16 to cook on the ships. Today the League of Ireland centre-back is at the World Cup. Against Spain. The only Irishman at the tournament.