A Million Followers? Try 10 Million
For 40-year-old Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha, Monday’s World Cup debut was supposed to be about stopping Spain.
Instead, he ended up stopping the internet.
After a stunning 0-0 draw against the European champions in Atlanta, Vozinha went from roughly 50,000 Instagram followers to more than 1 million. By the next day, that number had exploded to nearly 10 million, surpassing some of the biggest names in sports.
When he was shown the numbers during a postgame interview with Brazilian YouTube channel CazéTV, the veteran goalkeeper could barely believe it.
“Crazy, that’s crazy,” Vozinha said, laughing in disbelief.
The surge began during the match itself.
Spain entered the game as one of the favorites to win the World Cup and was widely expected to roll past tournament debutant Cape Verde. Instead, Spain’s stars repeatedly found themselves denied by Vozinha, who produced a string of impressive saves and anchored a defensive effort that earned the tiny island nation a historic point.
Watching the performance unfold, Brazilian streamer Casimiro Miguel, known as Cazé, noticed something unusual.
Vozinha barely had a social media following.
Cazé, whose CazéTV channel has more than 31 million YouTube subscribers and holds rights to broadcast all 104 World Cup matches in Brazil, decided to do something about it.
“Normally we ask for subscribers,” Cazé said during the broadcast. “We are not going to ask for subscribers today, we are going to ask for followers. For Vozinha. He is stopping Spain. He is shocking the world. He is the standout player of the first half. Why not show him some love?”
Viewers listened.
Within hours, hundreds of thousands of people had followed the goalkeeper. The numbers kept climbing long after the final whistle.
For Vozinha, the attention marked a remarkable chapter in an already unusual career. He did not begin playing professionally until he was 25 and is one of only a handful of players aged 40 or older at this year’s tournament.
His performance earned him man-of-the-match honors and sparked celebrations across Cape Verde, an Atlantic island nation of about 500,000 people that became the third-smallest country by population ever to qualify for a World Cup.
Vozinha is not the first World Cup underdog to become a social media sensation overnight.
Last month, New Zealand defender Tim Payne saw his Instagram following jump from about 4,700 to more than a million after Argentine soccer influencer El Scarso encouraged fans to support the little-known player. Payne now has nearly 6 million followers.
Both stories reflect FIFA’s growing effort to connect with younger audiences through digital platforms. For the 2026 tournament, FIFA expanded partnerships with digital broadcasters and social media companies, allowing fans to engage with the World Cup in new ways.
Few places embrace that online culture more enthusiastically than Brazil, where CazéTV has built a massive audience through a conversational style that often feels more like friends watching soccer together than a traditional broadcast.
And for one unforgettable night, that audience adopted a goalkeeper from Cape Verde.
“Thank you,” Vozinha told CazéTV. “The Brazilians have always supported us. We felt it during our campaign to qualify for the World Cup and now we are feeling it again at the biggest stage. We are thankful for it.”
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