As the World Cup continues on and each one of the 48 teams has a chance to play their opening game, let’s take a look at Cape Verde’s Helio Varela who is one of the players who features in the Israeli league and plays for Maccabi Tel Aviv.

The winger was born in Almada, Portugal but is of Cape Verdean descent which allows him to qualify to play for their national team. At the age of 24, Varela is coming off of a season that saw him score 6 goals across all competitions which also saw him hoist the Israel State Cup.

Just ahead of Cape Verde’s matchup against Spain (Monday 7pm Israel time) Varela spoke to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s official website about his feelings going into his debut as he explained what his side has been doing in order to give it their all as one of the tournament’s minnows.

“Our daily routine is training hard to start the competition well. We are doing everything that we can do in order to be our best on the field and to represent our country in the best way. We are very excited and we can’t wait until we play our first game against Spain.”

Having played for the yellow-and-blue this past season allowed Varela the chance to play against solid competition in order to prepare him as best as possible for the World Cup, “I believe the season at Maccabi helped me a lot as I played a lot of minutes and it got me ready for this moment.”

When playing against the likes of Spain and Uruguay in Group H, Varela knows that each team has top level players who feature in some of the best leagues in the world, but is looking at them as teams as a whole.

“I haven’t thought about what player that I really want to play against on the pitch so it’s really everybody that are in the World Cup that I’m excited to play as they are the best players in the world.”

The moan goal of course is to take points and win some games and should Cape Verde do just that they will obviously surprise many as one of the smallest national teams to ever participate in the World Cup.

“We are looking forward to to step by step in group play in order to collect points. We know we have a good team but as also know that we are going to play against some very good teams like Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. We need to do our best to take some points. Our goal as a team is to win some games, fight and do our best to do just that.”