Dr. Doiara Silva dos Santos
Tenured Assistant Professorat theFederal University of Viçosa (UFV), Brazil, andDirector of the Laboratory of Olympic and Sociocultural Studies of Sports (LEOS). Her research focuses on Olympic Studies, with particular interests in the sociocultural dimensions of the Olympic Movement, Olympic education, and sport policy.
Email: santosdoiara@ufv.br.
@leos.ufv (Instagram).
African presences have shaped Brazil’s nationhood through processes of resistance and cultural transformation across histories marked by enslavement and colonial violences. Music, religions, cuisines and languages persisted and reinvented themselves through resistance. Brazilian intellectual Lélia Gonzalez (1988), in formulating the political-cultural category of “Amefricanidade”, conceived it as a “historical process of intense cultural dynamism, adaptation, resistance, and reinterpretation”, advancing an Afro-centered perspective on the formation of the Americas. Rather than a static legacy, “Amefricanidade” is a living continuum, made particularly visible in Brazilian media coverage of Cape Verde’s FIFA World Cup debut.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States created a high-visibility moment for narratives linking Brazil and Cape Verde. This article examines how World Cup coverage and online circulation around Cape Verde’s debut reframed Brazil–Africa ties through the analysis of Grupo Globo, Brazil’s largest media conglomerate. Focus centers on GE and G1, news websites of Grupo Globo, with GE specialized in sports and G1 in general news. According to Kantar IBOPE Media, the audience measurement company formerly known as the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE), Globo’s broadcasts reached 117.6 million Brazilians during the first round of the group stage, with 84% of the population accessing its content. Digitally, Globo’s websites “GE” and “G1” recorded their highest average daily users of 2026 in the first round, 25% above the yearly baseline. A qualitative catalog of GE and G1 content from June 11 to July 19 was conducted using the search terms “Cabo Verde AND Brasil.” After screening headlines, six freely accessible pieces were selected, focusing on representativity and connection between Brazil and Cape Verde.
Within this corpus, GE emphasizes that Brazil and Cape Verde are connected not only by a shared colonizer but by a broader Atlantic historical ecology linking people, cultures, and circulations across the ocean. G1 highlights how Brazilian engagement with Cape Verde during the World Cup functioned as a “mirror gaze,” inviting Brazilians to reconsider their own histories. The coverage suggests that Brazil’s relative forgetfulness about Cape Verde can be challenged through historical awareness, and that a global sporting event can catalyze cultural connections otherwise obscured. Cultural affinities emerged clearly: according to GE, Brazil is widely admired across Cape Verde, where audiences are familiar with Brazilian telenovelas, music, football, and cultural products. Brazilian fans, in turn, “adopted” Cape Verde’s national team during its first FIFA World Cup appearance, affectionately calling Cape Verdeans “brothers” and “cousins.” In the Brazilian municipality of Cabo Verde, Minas Gerais, the tournament also prompted classroom discussions about the presence and heritage of Black populations in the town’s formation, showing how sport can activate local memory and educational reflection.
Josimar Dias, Cape Verde’s veteran goalkeeper, became a vivid expression of the Brazil–Cape Verde connection and the tournament’s most extensively covered Cape Verdean player. His nickname, “Vozinha”, used in both Brazilian and Cape Verdean Portuguese as an affectionate diminutive for grandmother, resonated with Brazilian audiences who recognized its linguistic intimacy. At 40, he combined standout saves with a relatable persona and gained more than 29 million new followers on Instagram, mostly Brazilian, as clips circulated across social platforms. The shared Lusophone field, with mutual intelligibility and Portuguese comment threads, amplified circulation and identification, making Cape Verde’s debut emotionally legible to Brazilian publics.
By foregrounding often-silenced Black histories, memories, and experiences, these media narratives can enable subjects to recognize themselves in their histories, origins, and forms of belonging through encounters with the Other. Portal GE also recalls a literary articulation of this affinity: in the poem “Você Brasil” (1956), Cape Verdean poet Jorge Barbosa compares the two lands, writing, “We are the same — only in Cape Verde, we are in a smaller version,” expressing a sense of kinship and resemblance that resonates with World Cup-era coverage.
Media coverage extended beyond match results. Narratives surrounding Cape Verde’s participation transcended wins, losses, and goals, centering on the recovery of shared histories and recognition of Afro-Atlantic ties. The World Cup functioned as a symbolic site of cultural encounter, where identification and recognition were recreated through visibility and emotional engagement. Fan adoption of Cape Verde, GE’s framing of trans-Atlantic historical ecologies, G1’s “mirror” metaphor, and educational initiatives in Minas Gerais demonstrate how the FIFA World Cup can mobilize Afro-Brazilian connections often latent in everyday discourse.
In sum, Cape Verde’s 2026 FIFA World Cup journey, as narrated by Brazilian media, operated as a catalyst for reflection on Afro-Brazilian identity, historical memory, and trans-Atlantic belonging. By highlighting Cape Verde through GE and G1, the analysis reveals an expanded public archive of recognition, where sporting spectacle becomes a platform for re-inscribing African presences in Brazilian culture and renewing Brazil’s connection to Africa. The reception of Cape Verde’s team, symbolized by the recognition of goalkeeper Vozinha, demonstrated how shared language, affection, and cultural memory can strengthen Afro-Atlantic bonds. This suggests that global events, when mediated through high-audience platforms, can counter historical silencing, prompting Brazilians to revisit their past and recognize, in Cape Verde’s debut, the living expression of Amefricanidades: a shared Afro-Atlantic belonging unfolding on football’s grandest stage.
