World Cup: Cape Verde Stun Spain

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1:11So we're into match day five of the World Cup. Me and Lloyd are at our base for the tournament, which is outside of Ye Olde King's Head in Santa Monica. Today, just wanted to mention that we went and had a lovely lunch with producer Jonathan. And then we went for a little mooch around some shops nearby. And then when it was time to come home and watch the Iran-New Zealand game, we were obviously looking for some electric bikes, which we call hogs, which is our favoured mode of transport while we're here. And we realised that some of these hogs will actually take two. So you can have one person on the front and one gripping from behind.

1:46And I said, well, we need to both hop on here. And you were absolutely categorically against it. And it was a bit of back and forth. And you were really resistant. And then in the end, you relented and we rode together all the way back to the apartment. And I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the best thing we've done since we've been there. So I want you to publicly apologize for moaning and questioning when I was right and it was fantastic. Is anything I've said there unfair? Well, no, yes. Oh, go on. Well, I was a bit apprehensive because, you know, we're riding on LA roads here. And I've ridden...

2:26A bit of confidence. I've ridden a bike on my own, absolutely. We've done it the whole time. We've done it the whole time, but I haven't ridden with anyone on the back before. I'll accept it was snug. It was very snug. Very, very snug. It felt like we were in the Winter Olympics in one of those toboggans. The thing is, I would have loved maybe five minutes in an empty car park just to kind of go round, get myself used to... Get on the freeway, see you salutes. And it was... No one saluted. No. It was good fun. No body saluted. It was really good fun. I quite like the fact that... We'll do it again.

2:56we will see what happens. We will do it again. There was a moment where you really did grip on and I felt like I was in a massive. Well, that was when we tried to cross the, yeah, quite a big road. It was quite a large road and even Jonathan on his own was like, oh, crikey, this is quite precarious. And then there's us two with, I think, a combined weight of 33 stone, I think we realised. Yeah, that's right. It was really struggling to accelerate. The hog was... I think if there's a situation where we need to get back from somewhere and there is only one hog, okay? We can do it. Fine, but there were multiple hogs around, which we could have got on, and you decided, no, we're going to recreate Titanic, but in LA, but on a hog.

3:33And I was right. We actually just, because it is the way we get around, we just arrived on separate hogs, and I wonder if you just wanted to share what your app said immediately you got off. There are some things I think that maybe we shouldn't share on the podcast. I think it's quite nice. Well, basically, there's two types of hogs, as mentioned. There's one where it's just for one person, and then there's one for two. As I got off That's not helped As we got off at Yelda King's head The app said Is there a second person on the bike? He's like Even producer Lizzie just put a hand over her mouth there The saddest thing to read Someone else on there?

4:16No, no, no Just me But I think it's because I've been going to I've been going to Gold's gym, and muscle is heavier than fat. Yeah, you're packing on the muscle. Yeah, so I'm packing on the muscle. And I also do think it is because at one point, as a little bit of a joke, I ferried my bottom towards the back end to kind of look like it. I was behind you. I did wonder what you were doing. And I just thought, oh, that looked quite like I'm on a Harley, but essentially it is an obese man on a hog. It didn't look cool at all. You asked me what it looked like, and I said you looked quite squat. I did.

4:49I mean, I think that's probably the politest way of putting it. So, look, these, to be fair, they're great ways of getting round LA. Fantastic. You could probably do without the body shaming. I might walk tomorrow just for a little bit of, well, I guess less fat shaming from a nap and also to get me steps up. Well, aside from that, jollity, it's been a very, very busy day of football. All day for us on LA time. Up early. So started at 9am. It was lovely. Belgium drew 1-0 with Egypt. Saudi Arabia and Uruguay also drew 1-0. Iran, New Zealand finished 2-0. Biggest story of the day, though, I think probably the biggest result of the tournament so far, Cape Verde, who managed to hold pre-tournament favourite Spain to a 0-0 draw.

5:36A reminder, all of the goals and highlights are available on the BBC Sport app. Guillaume Balaguet joins us now. Guillaume, how are you? Yeah, I'm fine. I'm very, very thankful that you invited me to talk about Que Verde. You were there in the stadium. I hope. And it's an incredible result. And it is a result that I think it is fair to say nobody saw coming. No, nobody saw it coming. And he has got his reasons. You have to start with Que Verde and their fantastic defending. But Spain have shown a bunch of things that you did not expect, which I'm sure we'll go through in detail to make you able to say that isn't it disappointing that one of the favorites for the tournament have turned out to be maybe not so favorite.

6:25But in any case, we went down to the press conference really, really disappointed. The media was in the media area. We were told to come down by the manager. Says, you know, the team has lost in 32. You have to trust us. You know, it was the nerves of the first game. There was not much of self-reflection. There are lessons to be learned, he says. Went home a little bit happier. And then started getting messages from people back home and got annoyed again. It should not happen. It should not be a draw. But you do hope, as Luis de la Fuente said, that there is a lesson or two to be learned from it.

7:00From your point of view, what were the lessons? The like width, depth, number nine, somebody that's true from long distance, and physicality. But apart from that. A little bit of that. But, you know, it all starts with something that was said briefly by Luis de la Fuente. He says that they weren't sure if Cabo Verde were going to actually go man to man and pressure high or defend deep. But they never expected that they were going to defend this deep. Really? I mean, all they had was defend, defend, defend, and one or two transitions. That was their hope. And they wanted more transitions. That was what the manager of Cabo Verde told them at halftime.

7:40but in any case it was mostly about defending so okay you've got a team that defends very deep on the edge of the box with nine men what do you do you set it with you put the wingers oh by the way we've got four wingers great three of them are injured or coming out of injury because the idea of the first two games against Cabo Verde and Saudi is basically that we were just going to get them ready for the bigger games for the next stage so we did not use one of our wingers uh that was fit in Jeremy Pino and the substitutions came quite late uh based on the fact that he wanted to have in this in the last few minutes 20 minutes or so uh Laminya Mal who is as much as he can play Nico Williams for about 15 minutes and uh and Mikel Merino for another 20.

8:31So he was just waiting and waiting and waiting, by which time I think the nerves of the side just made playing football even harder and harder, and Cabo Verde were just getting bigger and bigger and taller and taller and faster and faster. One issue was, and this is an incredible statistic, Mikel Ojazabal did not touch the ball in the first 30 minutes. That is nuts, Kian. Yeah, and he does tell you that there was no connection. He's our number nine, right? But also sometimes as a midfielder. I was going to say, he realized that there was a lot of players. Yeah. And he realized that it was a lot of players that were passing the ball around.

9:11He was not needed in that role. He was needed in the role of finishing actions or making runs in behind. And there was not a lot of that because there wasn't a lot of space and there was nobody finding him. So imagine you start making two or three runs, which I saw him doing. He wasn't found. And it's not that he gave up, but interestingly enough, the message he was sending to the side is like, be patient. Don't pass the ball just for passing it. Be patient. It will happen. And yet what that was doing was the opposite. It was slowing things down. People didn't want to risk anything. They didn't want to lose the ball.

9:46They thought if there is a counter, we're going to be killed here. So all in all, we just did not find a way. And of course, once we got perhaps the likes of Cucurella, who was the only one who understood what was going on and running behind and put crosses in, there was nobody to put crosses in too because we didn't have that number nine that can finish action. So it was the wrong choice of players. But let's not kill everybody just yet because actually if Arran Torres, instead of hitting the bar, scores in the first half, it would have been a completely different game. But that didn't happen.

10:20And the game became very long, very slow, and we didn't find the solutions. Do you think that was what Cape Verde's plan was from the off, knowing that actually a lot of their wingers are injured and let's just go, let's just dig in deep and see what they do. Yeah, yeah. It was all about, let's make sure that we don't get many shots on goal. 27, plenty. But on target then, seven, not enough. They defended really, really well. Do you know how many fouls they committed in the whole game to stop us? I do know this. It's one. Just one. Wow. One. Do you know how many yellow cards? I don't know that.

10:54Just one yellow card. Wow. There was a lack of, as you said, Rick, it was a lack of energy. and as you said, Lloyd, it was just once they realized Cabo Verde that what they were doing, they were doing very well, they just kept doing it. I must say I joined the celebrations of Cabo Verde at the end because it was so nice to see and it was so enjoyable to see them just jumping up and down so I just got in the middle of all the celebrations and I felt Cabo Verdean for a second. Yeah, and you were like, yeah, I'm going to switch allegiance here, why not? Lloyd, you wanted to talk about the Cape Verde keeper who had an absolute worldie.

11:29Well, he had such a great game. I mean, when we saw the line-up, we got up early. And look, I'm not throwing any shade on him. Like, he looks like a, you know, he's 40 years old. He's 40 years old. And he looks 40. And he looks 40. He looks like he's had a number of paper rounds. But he had an absolutely fantastic game. 40 years old with a lot, a lot of experience and some absolutely fantastic, fantastic saves. Had you heard of him before, Guillaume? Were you expecting that? And were you annoyed with him by the end? I'm going to ignore the first question if I heard something. I mean, just give me anybody who heard of him before.

12:05He plays in the Portuguese second division. So if anyone knows. His name is Moussinha. Yeah. And that's where it stops. And now we know not only that. We know a little bit more now because he is good. You know, it was the perfect night for him. He cried at the end. and multiply by 4 million, I think, the amount of followers on Instagram. Well, do you know, as he's live on the podcast at the moment, it's 5.1 million. He had 45 ,000 followers at the start of this morning. It is now half-eight in LA. He's got 5.1 million followers. To put that into context, he's had a great day. Jordan Pickford, who has played in three World Cups, has, wait a minute, a bit of a row down here, 1.6 million.

12:48Are you just bringing up Pickford because he mugged you off on the pod yesterday? No, we were very good friends, and it was just good, friendly banter. But, I mean, look, that's going to change his life. There was a story earlier, I'm not sure if you saw it, he couldn't afford for his mum to come out to pay for the visa. So, just like, I know this is not why you come to the World Cup. You come to the World Cup, it's the biggest tournament in the world, and it's the pinnacle of your footballing career, but that 5.1 million is only going to grow, that's going to turn into brand deals, he's going to be able to support his family for the rest of his life.

13:17So, you know, you come to the World Cup to win, but also you get these gorgeous little fairytale stories. And Vizinha, I mean, he's had an absolute cracking game. And I'm assuming his life's going to change from here on in. You would think so. I don't know if you watch much television in the States, but David Beckham is in every single one of the advertisements. That's correct. We've noticed that. Yes, we have. So he's Ibrahimovic as well in quite a few. Thierry in a couple. So I hope he does. but you uh you know you spread you explain a good story or a story that is not so good but may change as well now he may invite the his family as you said the business were very expensive so everybody that had a foreign passport that came from calo verde they need to pay i think is 15 000 for the visa so ridiculous amount of money and uh and now i think uh not through the amount of followers on instagram but uh with some clever work from his agent i hope that his family will manage to see the next couple of games and by the sounds of it with everybody with one point they've got a very good chance of going through as well do you know you will not know this either of you do you know how many teams have we beaten since we won the world cup in 2010 and which if you know them the amount give me the names no go on you won't get it iran okay australia yeah and costa America only really yeah so we get a little bit distracted by us having won the European Championships but to be honest since we won the World Cup we've been a disaster so there's all of a sudden you start seeing things and stats uh in a different light uh only 24 hours ago I was saying can I just say very softly we're not only candidates with the best team in the tournament and I'm going to have to eat my words.

15:07So a little bit of humble pie for everyone at the moment. Yeah, but you know, we don't need to judge who's the best team in the tournament yet, in fairness. A bit of context I think would be useful for the listeners on Cape Verde. So it's a tiny little nation off the west coast of Africa, third smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup based on population. After Curacao and Iceland. That's actually, that's good from Lloyd. finally adding some value they're ranked 67th in the FIFA world rankings Spain are ranked 2nd that is the 9th largest gap ever in a World Cup fixture and then I quite like this one so all 26 players in Cape Verde's squad are valued at combined transfer value of about 63 million dollars and you compare that to Spain and you just look at Lamin Jamal who I think current market value is something like$230 million.

16:08And that tells you the story of why this is such a fantastic result for the World Cup and why we love the World Cup. Because none of that matters when it's 11 v 11 on a football pitch, Guillaume. Yeah, you know the last eight will be the usual suspects. But up to that point, you're going to get results like this. And it's going to allow us to understand about the country. For instance, stories, personal stories, which I'm sure you must have told the one of Roberto Lopez, and stop me if you have done it already, from the centre-back from Charmau Robbers, who sent a LinkedIn note. Have you ever heard of it?

16:50It's really good. The diaspora of Cabo Verde means that there is three times more people that have come from Cabo Verde or family Cabo Verde, outside Cabo Verde, that they are in Cabo Verde, which is 600 ,000 only. So to get the best players around, LinkedIn was used. And Roberto Lopez got a message in Portuguese saying, would you like to join this project? So he ignored it. Months later, he got the same message in English. And he thought, oh, this may be something. And a few weeks later, he was in the national side. And now he's in a World Cup. And in the debut game, they just got a draw against Spain.

17:28That's beautiful. Another fairy tale story. Right, let's talk about Belgium, Egypt. not a cracking game I would say Guillaume just a couple of players I wanted to pick out really Abdul Karim who came on in place of Mo Salah he's 18 he looks like the real deal already and he signed for Barcelona he was on loan to the juvenile the under 18s of Barcelona from Malali the Egyptian team and basically he's done so well that Barcelona have decided to pay the sum of 1.5 million euros for him to be the number nine of Barcelona B. But depending how he goes, and of course, if he scores in the World Cup or he shows his personality in the World Cup, he may just train with the first team.

18:21But yeah, they've got high hopes from him. He's the kind of striker that you don't get in La Masia. He's got quality, good head of the ball, he's big, and you should become bigger, he's only 18. and as I said, he seems not to be phased by anything and he did help the under-18s to win the league with five goals this season since he joined in February. So yeah, he's now a Barcelona player. And then Romelu Lukaku, who I wouldn't have been surprised if he had retired from international football, to be honest. Can I just interject? We're at Gioldi King's head, Guillaume, in Santa Monica. We got here.

18:58I just came from the toilet. there's a lot of English fans just watching the highlights the Belgium highlights were being played and some Cockney guy was like is he still around? and it was Lukaku 20 seconds after he comes on he sort of makes a nuisance of himself the ball goes in the back of the net and you're like okay still effective but then equally right near the end that header is painful because it's the perfect ball for him Yeah, let me start with, I would love to have heard the conversation between Courtois and Lukaku because Courtois has returned to the national side, hasn't he, after 21 months because the captaincy was given to Lukaku and he didn't like that.

19:41So he just started messaging all the other players when he realized that he wanted to be in a World Cup and eventually he would have had to sit down with Lukaku and either apologize or whatever. but for both of them especially for Lukaku as you're suggesting is the end of his time with the national side the opportunity to shine he didn't score the first goal even though we just tried to convince the FIFA to give it to him just because he's Lukaku I was very close to that and then yes we know that he doesn't always get it right when he finishes does he? The actual highlight of the entire game for me probably was the Belgian coach getting absolutely drenched by the sprinkler before the start of the game and then just having to sit looking like he was doing a sort of wet t-shirt competition.

20:28He obviously asked someone, have we got spare clothes? He was like, not for you, mate. No, no. Do you want to wear a strip? Sit there in your sopping suit, I'm afraid. That was excellent. And then Saudi Arabia, Uruguay. I mean, Saudi Arabia done well to get a point. And I just thought, is there something around the fact that you've got this influx of players now coming into the Saudi Arabian League. Is that just sort of bringing the whole level up for Saudi Arabia, possibly? I'm not sure. Let's not make a lot out of a draw against Uruguay that could have and should have won the game. First half, it was Uruguay that didn't seem to be at the races.

21:11It was all a little bit too slow. But then once they started putting another gear, not only they scored in the second half, they should have actually taken the three points. The Saudi Arabia team now, as we said, with the opportunity to have the same amount of points as Cabo Verde. And the only one really that made himself the star of the show really was the goalkeeper, Alouaiz, who had a huge amount of saves, I think seven or eight, which you don't normally get of that kind of quality. And that allowed Saudi to get a point. Can I make a little point? You mentioned earlier about the introduction of the Saudi league and how it's grown and stuff.

21:50I was doing some research today. So the 10 leagues with most players at the 2026 World Cup, Saudi comes in number six. Does it? It comes in at number six. So it's the Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, La Liga, Serie A, Saudi Pro League, above MLS. And then in ninth is the championship, which weirdly has the most amount of scorers at the moment. Is that still true? We'll have a look at that. But the fact that the Saudi Pro League, obviously, there's a lot of talk about it. Actually, how many people, you know, who is going there? What quality is going there? They've got 47 players represented at this World Cup.

22:27So just goes to show you it is having an effect. Where are you staying, Guillaume? What are your plans for the tournament? Much in Chattanooga, near Atlanta. It's about two hours away, which is where Spain are based. So they've given us a massive space to work near where they train. They give us 15 minutes of training sessions that we can watch. They give us a playa every day. We have a press conference as well. We can talk to the manager. A bunch of people in the Federation, like Aitor Karanka, the former Borough Manager, the director of the Federation there. So they open doors, and it really is a pleasure to be here.

23:05But I just came with the idea, and I booked this place, which, as you can see, is a nice big house, big garden as well, for a whole month. now I'm thinking, did I do the right thing? So I just hope we make it far into the zone. I'll have to just invite somebody, some friends. Hey, we'll come over. Yeah, but listen, we'll come over. It wasn't an explicit invite, however. It felt like it. We would love to come to Chattanooga. Do you know which player you're going to chat to tomorrow? Because they're going to be grumpy, aren't they? Yeah, it's Mikel Merino. I don't know. Mikel Merino probably, when he heard about it, is like, me?

23:39Why? I barely played. Well, you touch the ball, and that's the main thing. They were going through the Mikels, and they said, we can't put Ojasabar through this. He's got to get a lot of grief. It's you, Marino. Well, we'll chat to you again soon, Guillem. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Cheers, mate.

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25:08The 2023 Ballon d 'Or France footballer is Lionel Messi. The winner is Cristiano Ronaldo. This is the story of the greatest rivalry in the history of sport. A rivalry that split football into two fates for a generation. There could be no, oh, Messi and Ronaldo are both great players. There had to be one that was better. They 100 million percent pushed each other to the next level. And, you know, we were the lucky ones who got to see it. I'm Steve Crossman. This is Sporting Giants Messi v Ronaldo. Listen first on BBC Sounds. The Football Day at the People World Cup 2026. With Rick Edwards and Lloyd Griffith.

25:49Live from LA. Always good to get an invite to Guillaume's house. Now, I do want to talk about the game that we've just finished watching, which was Iran-New Zealand. And there is a little bit of context to this. Iranians call America the great Satan. Iran is part of what America labels the axis of evil. They are traditionally not the best of friends. Then you've got a war on now. It's coming to an end. The peace deal between two countries apparently is going to be signed in a couple of days. There's a lot going on. So what happened when the Iranian football team came to Los Angeles, where, by the way, there is a very large Iranian expat community.

26:29Let's bring in our North America correspondent Shima Khalil who's been down at the Los Angeles stadium. Hi Shima what was the atmosphere like in the in the stadium and outside the stadium before the game? You know it felt like two different Irans two different Iranian crowds it almost felt like Iran versus Iran if you will in in the sense that obviously there's been so much build-up so much controversy there's already been a pre-game you know demonstration that I've been to and when I was outside it was clear what the sentiment was like at least in terms of the chants the anti-regime chants the anti-team chants many of the people there are saying look we cannot separate the team from the regime to us they don't represent us they represent the Islamic Republic and those Those are a very specific group of people.