At the time, Lopes—nicknamed “Pico”—was working at a Dublin bank while playing part-time for Shamrock Rovers, an Irish soccer club. Born to an Irish mother and a Cape Verdean father, he had unknowingly been flagged by Cape Verde national team coach Rui Aguas, who was searching for eligible players to bolster the squad of the small West African island nation.

Nine months later, Aguas followed up—this time in English—asking if Lopes had seen his earlier message.

“I copied the [initial] message and put it into Google Translate, and it basically said, ‘We’re looking at getting new players into the Cape Verde squad and would you be interested in declaring for Cape Verde?’” Lopes recalled to BBC Sport.

“I was absolutely buzzing with that. I was like, ‘Yep, 100% I’d love to be a part of the squad’.”

Just three weeks later, after scrambling to get documents from his father like a birth certificate and passport, Lopes was on a plane to make his international debut against Togo. 

Now, Cape Verde and Lopes are making their World Cup debut

Over the next seven years, Lopes became a fixture in the national team as Cape Verde transformed from a minnow on the international stage into one of the 2026 World Cup‘s surprise stories. 

Last week, the nation made its first-ever appearance at the tournament and opened with a scoreless draw against Spain—a remarkable result given the matchup featured the world’s No. 3-ranked team against No. 64. For Lopes, the opportunity has been hard to believe.

“From when I was a young child, and I imagine every aspiring footballer when they were young, they wanted to play at the highest level possible and, for me, it doesn’t go any further than the World Cup,” Lopes said.

“Being able to represent my family playing for the national team and being able to put our family name out there at one of the biggest sporting events in the world fills me with great pride.”

Lopes says leaving banking for soccer was actually ‘risky’ 

In hindsight, Lopes’s decision to accept the call-up may seem obvious. The opportunity ultimately took him from a bank desk in Dublin to the world’s biggest sporting stage, helping him build a professional football career and land partnerships with brands such as Intersport Elverys. 

But at the time, there was no guarantee the gamble would pay off.

“It was risky because I was in a solid job,” Lopes recalled in a FIFA video released this week. “Where our league was at that moment, there wasn’t much security in terms of a career in football, so when [Aguas] spoke to me about his plan, his ideas, and what he had going forward, I had to be a part of it.”

Lopes initially viewed it as a short-term experiment—maybe two years—but what followed has stretched far beyond that horizon: “I would say we’ve achieved what we wanted to achieve, but we still want more as well.”

That tension between risk and reward is hardly unique to soccer. Much like entrepreneurs leaving stable jobs to launch startups or professionals betting on an unconventional opportunity, elite athletes often make career-defining decisions without knowing how they’ll end. For some, the leap never lands. For others, it changes everything.

Richardo Pepi offers a similar example. The 23-year-old’s U.S. national team star’s rise is not only a testament to his talent but also to years of sacrifice by his family.

“You used to do whatever you needed to do to get that money and take them,” Ricardo’s father, Daniel Pepi, said, of funding youth soccer. “Sometimes we used to borrow some money. Sometimes I would ask for a loan at my job, or from my dad. Sometimes I had to pawn the title to the car. Whatever we had to do to just keep going.”

Even global stars like Cristiano Ronald have described a childhood marked by financial hardship.

“When I was a kid, 11 or 12 years old, we didn’t have money,” the Portuguese strike recalled to ITV in 2019. Raised in a struggling household in Madeira, Ronald has often spoken about the hardships that shaped his early life—and have even led him down a path to become one of few billionaire athletes.

But despite their individual backgrounds, the one thing pulling each of the athletes together has been their willingness risks—even when the result is entirely unknown.

Or, as Microsoft executive vice president Ryan Roslansky—who oversees LinkedIn—put it more simply: “Big win for recruiters who don’t give up on a great candidate.”

Cape Verde will next take on Uruguay on June 21 and Saudi Arabia on June 26.

Will you be skipping out on work to watch the World Cup? Fortune wants to hear from you. Email preston.fore@fortune.com.