ESPN’s Taylor Twellman on Cape Verde’s World Cup Moment & Ronaldo Hurting Portugal

Rich wanted Taylor Twellman to give him a path for Cape Verde to reach a World Cup knockout round, and Twellman, channeling Dumb and Dumber, allowed that there's always a chance.

The math is tight. Twellman explained that the first tiebreaker for the best third-place teams is points, so Cape Verde would likely need to get to four, which means winning one of their games against a group that includes Spain and Uruguay. He doesn't see it. But there's a small window: if the cutoff among third-place teams falls at three points, it goes to goal differential, and Cape Verde could conceivably sneak through on three draws.

The bigger Cape Verde story remains its goalkeeper's Instagram surge. Already up around 13.5 million followers from 50,000, he has, by the show's reckoning, more than Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Jalen Brunson combined, maybe more than all 30 NBA teams. If he hits 15 million, that's three times the population of the nation he represents. He was also, Twellman noted, genuinely brilliant in goal.

Then Rich asked the dream scenario: what if Cape Verde advances and Portugal doesn't? Twellman would give anything for it, and he knows it would make him even more hated by every Cristiano Ronaldo fan, who already have his face plastered on their blogs. But he's been saying it for six months. Ronaldo has gone 1,005 minutes without a goal from the run of play, roughly ten major-tournament games, and at 41 he's the oldest non-goalkeeper ever to play in a World Cup. Twellman isn't blaming him so much as arguing the role has changed: with the best midfield in the tournament, Portugal needs mobility, fluidity, and uncertainty, and Ronaldo now stalls everything and makes them predictable.

His evidence was the previous match, where he believes Bruno Fernandes should have scored but Ronaldo got in the way, more concerned with matching Messi, Mbappe, Haaland, and Harry Kane than winning the game. Portugal wins, Twellman said, if Ronaldo lets that ball slide across to Bruno. Make him a super sub for the end of games, and roll the dice. Rich dubbed Twellman the Darth Vader of the Iberian Peninsula.