Cape Verde’s Vozinha is on the Ballon d’Or Goalkeeper of the Year shortlist. That’s not a sentence many people would have predicted a year ago.
The 40-year-old, real name Josimar José Évora Dias, is one of ten names in the running after the summer he had at the World Cup. Cape Verde were making their first-ever appearance. He helped them get out of the group and into the knockouts. That alone would have been a fairytale. What he did against Spain made him a household name.
Seven saves. A 0-0 draw with the team that went on to win the tournament. He was everywhere that night. Then he put in another strong showing against Uruguay and took Argentina to extra time in the last 32. By the end of it he had gone from a little-known keeper at a Portuguese second-division club to one of the most talked-about players at the tournament.
He’s now at Colo-Colo in Chile. The other names on the list are the ones you’d expect: Courtois, Raya, Unai Simón, Joan García, Emiliano Martínez, Bounou, Mendy, Kobel, Safonov. Vozinha is the outlier, and that’s exactly why the nomination lands so well.
The ceremony is in London on 26 October. He probably won’t win it. That almost doesn’t matter. A keeper who didn’t turn professional until he was 25, who spent years bouncing around clubs in Angola, Moldova, Cyprus and Slovakia, is now sitting on the same shortlist as some of the best in the world. That’s the story.