Football Daily | Filth, fury and fairytales: Uruguay and Cape Verde bring football heritage

The Geopolitics World Cup has its North Korea 1966, its Cameroon 1990, rank outsiders to revive hearts hardened by relentless cynicism. For Pak Doo-ik and Roger Milla, read Vozinha, and all his Cape Verde teammates, including Pico Lopes, a defender recruited while playing for Shamrock Rovers from the diaspora via LinkedChat . An archipelago nation with a population smaller than Bradford has negotiated a tough group including two former winners in Spain and Uruguay. They will next meet Argentina in Miami, the adopted city of Lionel Messi, where the fairytale likely ends. Though if not, then they would become the greatest World Cup story of all. “We are small but we have big hearts,” sobbed Vozinha following a 0-0 draw with Saudi Arabia and a quick check on the other Group H result from Guadalajara. Talking of football heritage, Uruguay exiting in a flurry of filth and fury during their 1-0 loss to Spain showed off something else not yet commodified and flogged to the highest bidder. Marcelo Bielsa’s tournament legacy is mixed . His Argentina team of all the talents were dumped out at the group stage in 2002 amid floods of woe. Chile in 2010 played some of the loveliest soccer on show in South Africa before exiting to Brazil in the last 16. A third stab with Uruguay has been a self-confessed disaster. Such true confessions were made most publicly. Bielsa’s guttural demand that the flash interviewer hurry the bleep up was followed by a paint-stripping mea culpa. …