Show caption Panama’s Roman Torres takes a picture of his team’s fans celebrating after he scored in the dramatic 2-1 home win over Costa Rica which mean World Cup qualification for the first time in the country’s history. Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images World Cup 2018 ‘Like something handed down by God’ – how Panama reached the World Cup Crying ballboys kicked balls into the stands, someone turned the lights out and a woman fainted on the pitch as Panama made it to their first finals by the skin of their teeth Sid Lowe @sidlowe Sun 17 Jun 2018 16.00 BST Share on Facebook

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“When the goal went in, I could have gone out and got so drunk I wouldn’t have remembered a thing the next day.” You and the rest of the country, Hernán.

The Panama manager, Hernán Darío “Bolillo” Gómez, says he is a “believer” and insists he “knew” there was a way back but time was running out and so was hope. Looking across at his players he saw “a ghost” appear before them. In the final minutes of the final game last October, they found themselves outside the qualifying places – the dream of a first World Cup denied at the last, as it had been four years earlier. Drawing with Costa Rica, Panama desperately needed a goal from somewhere, anywhere.

What came next was, says Édgar Carvajal, the assistant manager, “like something handed down by God”. A long ball, headed on by Luis Tejada, and there, steaming in, was Román Torres – the centre‑back, a huge, dreadlocked figure. “I still get goosebumps,” Carvajal says. The ball crashed into the net. Torres turned, whipped off his shirt, leapt the advertisement boards and raced along the running track, fans clambering on to fences, drinks thrown into the air.

“We had visualised it, dreamed, longed for that moment,” says Gabriel Gómez, the country’s most capped player, gazing at the goal where the ball went in. He turns, looks the other way. “We’d been knocked out at this other end four years before and that hurt. This time it all came off: the result from Trinidad where the USA unexpectedly lost and our goal, which came just at the right moment.” Panama – yes, Panama – were going to the World Cup.

Hernán Darío ‘Bolillo’ Gómez at Estadio Rommel Fernandez in May 2018 as the team prepares for their first World Cup. Photograph: Ramon Lepage/Guardian

Not quite. It was the 88th minute, two minutes plus stoppage time to hang on and never, ever let go. An injury-time goal had cost them the chance of going to Brazil 2014 and they could not let that happen again. Crying ballboys kicked balls into the stands, never to be returned. A substitute leapt from the bench, ran over and booted another as far away as he could. A few more seconds spent. Then someone turned the lights out.

From the office under the stand where she works, Elida de Mitchel appeared on the pitch, walking straight past the referee, and pretended to faint. It was a policeman’s idea. Anything to stop the game, run down the clock. Three minutes she was there before eventually Gabriel Gómez and the substitute goalkeeper José Calderón “helped” her off, asking what was happening in the other game as they went. The USA were still losing, she said. “Sure?” “Yes, you’re in the World Cup!” When the whistle at last went Bollillo slipped to his knees, gripping a ball. As he and Torres rolled round together the goalscorer shouted: “You deserve this!”

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One of the photos Bolillo is fondest of shows Torres embracing a fan who is on the track, not in the stands as he should be. A policeman arrives and hugs both. Beyond the Rommel Fernández stadium in Panama City, there was pandemonium, people flooding the streets. The players paraded on the back of a fire engine. Alcohol sold out and the party ran all night. The president declared the next day a national holiday. “The emotion, the satisfaction, the belief,” Bolillo says. “In life you can dream and dreams can come true.”

On Monday they face Belgium in Sochi. “It will be emotional,” says the striker Blas Pérez, whose international career goes back 17 years. “It was always a dream and when I’m standing there listening to the anthem at the World Cup, I don’t know how I’ll react.” Felipe Baloy also began his international journey in 2001. “I’ve had a long career, lots of falls, lots of sadness; this is a reward for many of us,” he says. “I feel lucky to be involved; the whole country will enjoy this.”

The journey had been hard. “Ooooh, very hard,” Bolillo says. There were defeats, tension, even death, the midfielder Amílcar Henríquez gunned down outside his home. After one game in Mexico there had been a fight in the dressing room, encouraged by the manager, shouting: “Go on then, hit each other! Do it!” “Cathartic,” he calls it.

Felipe Baloy, right, who made his international debut in 2001 said “I’ve had a long career, lots of falls, lots of sadness; this is a reward for many of us”. Photograph: Ramon Lepage/Guardian

The Colombian, who had taken his country and Ecuador to the World Cup, arrived on a mission to do the same with Panama. Only two squad members play in Panama but only five are in Europe – two in Belgium, plus Romania, Slovakia and Spain – and while the rest play in the Americas that does not include Brazil, Argentina or Uruguay. Torres plays for Seattle Sounders. Traditionally, baseball and boxing are bigger than football, although that is changing.

“We worked in central America and had seen Panama,” Carvajal says. “We always thought: ‘This team has to go to the World Cup,’ but it’s difficult; football is underdeveloped here. Bolillo is perfect for groups like this, giving them the professionalism they lack. Physically, Panamanian players are very good and have belief: they see Germany and think they can take them on mano a mano but we had to develop other aspects. This is the Profe’s fifth World Cup; he had a lot to teach them.”

“The principal thing is not the pitch; it’s how you live,” Bolillo says. “You have to build good people, a family. When I arrived there were countless off-field problems. It’s more important to be a good leader than a good coach, someone to say: ‘I know what this is, how this works.’”

Discipline was vital, just as it had been for the previous manager, Julio Dely Valdés. Bolillo talks about how football makes you pay for “poor living”. He says: “Last time Panama weren’t a family, they didn’t behave well and football said ‘no’. This time, ‘luck’ fell differently. Why? Because we deserved it to.”

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Yet while Valdés imposed discipline, Bolillo delegated, trusting in the veterans to lead. There is loyalty to them, then? “And gratitude,” he says. “I slept easy.”

The story of Panama reaching the World Cup does not have a grand explanation, nor some big plan behind it – it is about them. A generation of players, most of whom have spent years away from home and had lost out four years earlier, many of them reaching the end. That defeat haunted them but drove them too. “Francisco Maturana [a former Colombia manager] said sometimes to lose is to win,” says the midfielder Gómez. “We lost out but I think we weren’t ready as a team and that day brought us together. This time we were ready. We also knew it was the last chance for many of us.”

Blas Pérez signs autographs for fans ahead of a training session. Photograph: Ramon Lepage/Guardian

As the game progressed, it really was. “We were never out of the World Cup … until then,” Bollillo says. By half-time, the USA were 2-0 down but Panama trailed 1-0 to Costa Rica. “You’re doing things you haven’t done for three years,” Bolillo shouted in the dressing room. “There’s no bollocks, nothing! If you’re scared, turn out the lights, we’ll go home. No talking now, show it. Show it!”

Pérez equalised soon after, scoring a goal that did not go over the line. The news from Trinidad was that the USA had pulled one back, too.“It’s inevitable you look to the bench, wondering about that score, thinking: ‘They haven’t said anything,’” Gómez says. “And we kept going forward, bravely.” They had to. A first World Cup was at stake.