Pedro "Bubista" Brito

Pedro Brito — known universally as Bubista, a Creole nickname rooted in his island home of Boa Vista — is the head coach of Cape Verde at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the country's first ever appearance at the tournament. Born on 6 January 1970, he was a centre-back and captain of the national team in the early 2000s, winning 21 caps for the Blue Sharks before moving inside the Cape Verdean federation as a youth coach and developer.

He took the senior job in February 2020 and has been there ever since — more than six years of continuous work, an unusual stability in African football. Under his quietly methodical management Cape Verde reached the round of 16 at AFCON 2021 and the quarter-finals at AFCON 2024, beating Mauritania and pushing South Africa to the brink. The federation never wavered, and the patience paid off on 13 October 2025 when Cape Verde finished their CAF qualifying group above Cameroon by four points to clinch a historic World Cup spot.

Cape Verde have been drawn in Group H alongside Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia — one of the toughest pools in the tournament. With Garry Rodrigues, Ryan Mendes, Dylan Tavares and a squad built largely on the Portuguese diaspora, Bubista's task at this debut World Cup is to make the islands' first appearance count: a population of about 500,000 watching the smallest African country ever to play a senior FIFA World Cup match.