Duarte brothers, Cape Verde’s midfield engine that helmed the team against Argentina

4 min readJul 4, 2026 02:40 PM IST

Cape Verdean brothers Deroy Duarte and Laros Duarte in action during FIFA World Cup 2026 match. (AP)

It could have been the greatest night for the Duarte family, but will now carry with it a bittersweet feeling. Brothers taking the field together in a FIFA World Cup game is a special occasion and it was no different for Cape Verde’s Deroy and Laros Duarte against world champions Argentina in Miami on Friday.

The brothers had seen action in every one of their group games, but either one or both had come off the bench. But against Lionel Messi & Co, coach Bubista saw it fit to start both brothers in midfield. The evening gained even more lustre when Deroy found Cape Verde’s first equaliser at about the hour mark, nutmegging not one but two Argentines, including goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez.

The brothers didn’t stay on the pitch till the end of the game – Laros coming off in the 67th minute, when the game was still locked 1-1, and Deroy in the 100th, when the manager brought on Yannick Semedo to chase yet another leveller after Lisandro Martinez had put the world champions ahead for the second time. The move would have seemed justified when Sidny Lopes Cabral engineered an eye-catching curler to make it 2-2. The Duarte brothers would have believed that it could be their day, but fate had other ideas.

Fate, in fact, hasn’t often given them an easy deal. They were raised in Rotterdam in The Netherlands by single mother Maria da Cruz, who drove them to local academies. Their father, Mario ‘Maica’ Duarte, is a former footballer originally from Sao Nocolau in Cape Verde. In fact, the brothers represented the Dutch at the youth level.

“It feels like a dream,” Maria was quoted by dutchnews.nl before the Round of 32 game. In fact, she was in the USA to watch Cape Verde’s first two matches against Spain and Uruguay before flying back with her eldest son Lajoyce before the game against Saudi Arabia, for which Deroy wad adjudged the player of the match for a stellar job in defensive midfield. In the last minute of that game, Laros – the elder of the footballing brothers by about two and a half years – was sent clear on goal for a chance to seal his country’s first ever World Cup win, but his shot was turned away by Saudi goalkeeper Mohammed Al-Owais.

“We assumed they’d play three matches, so if we got to see two of them that was great,” she said. “My son could only get time off work for two games and I didn’t want to stay in America on my own. So we came back,” she said, hastily packing for her second trip to America in three weeks to watch her sons take on the might of the world champions.

“My boys have always wanted to play against the best. For them, it was a dream come true. Losing is part of the game and it’s no shame to lose to some of the best players in the world. Nobody thought they would go through, but after they drew against Spain, the boys thought: we can do this.”

Story continues below this ad

Maria recalls how she juggled work and her sons’ footballing ambitions since Laros was five when he joined Sparta club. “I worked part-time, so I’d dash back home, make dinner before they came out of school at 3.30pm, pick them up and go straight up to Sparta,” she said.

“People ask how I managed it for all those years and I say: ‘it just becomes your life’. You see they have talent and as long as they enjoy it and want to keep going, you go with them because all you can do as parents is support them and take them where they need to be. I didn’t really have that Cape Verdean social life because I was always busy with training in the week and matches at weekends.”

The football mom admits getting nervous when her sons play.

“When they’re not playing, I can just watch the game, but when my children play, I’m chasing every ball. It’s so tense.”