Portugal were missing Cristiano Ronaldo and other key players but the result still feels like a big shock, even though Cape Verde have risen up the world rankings

Let’s start with the caveats. There was no Cristiano Ronaldo, João Moutinho, Nani, Fábio Coentrão or Bruno Alves. There wasn’t even José Bosingwa. This was a young, experimental Portugal side. It was only a friendly. It was windy. And Cape Verde have improved immeasurably over the past decade; they are ranked 38th in the world, not quite as good as Wales but better than Scotland, and were denied a play-off for World Cup qualification only after they were penalised for fielding an ineligible player.

But still, this is a result that will reverberate and will be remembered – the night when Portugal, semi-finalists at the last European Championship, hosted their former colony and lost 2-0.

Portugal’s coach, Fernando Santos, who last summer took Greece to the last 16 of the World Cup, made as brave a fist of it as any one could have done, his dour face even saggier than usual. “We did some positive things,” he said, “especially in the second half, and even when we had 10 players they couldn’t get to our goal. They were looking for a goal and we could have reduced the deficit.” Some relief, then: Portugal pluckily held out to lose only 2-0 to a country with a population (500,000) 21 times smaller than their own, many of whose players are scattered through the lower reaches of the Portuguese league.

Santos did acknowledge it was not all good news. “The first half had some negative aspects,” he said. “We lacked speed and doing tricks isn’t enough. We lacked aggression and it looked like an exhibition game when we knew that the game was going to be difficult because it was against a Portuguese-speaking country.”

Cape Verde’s opener, scored seven minutes before half-time, was freakish, a cross from Odaïr Fortes, the Reims right-winger, floating over Anthony Lopes in the Portugal goal and in at the back post. But although there was an element of luck about the finish, Vitorino Antunes was muscled off the ball far too easily in the buildup. Five minutes later Héldon, who is on loan at Córdoba from Sporting, clipped a free-kick across goal from a similar position wide on the right and with both goalkeeper and defence slow to react, Gegé turned in the ball from a couple of yards. It was inexcusably sloppy.

When the centre-back André Pinto was sent off on the hour for a wild challenge on Héldon, Portugal’s fate was sealed. “The national team is worth more than that,” said the forward Ukra, who came on at half-time. “It’s true it was a warm-up game but we wanted to win. We have to lift our heads.”

Portugal have made a habit of losing form and focus between tournaments, needing play-offs to make the past two World Cups and Euro 2012, but after a 2-1 home win over Serbia on Sunday, they sit top of their qualifying group for Euro 2016 despite losing their opening game at home to Albania. With Serbia docked the three points they were awarded after their abandoned game against Albania, when a drone carrying a provocative flag sparked crowd trouble in Belgrade, qualifying – even without a play-off – should not present too much of an issue.

This was probably an aberration, the result of an inexperienced side not taking their opponents seriously enough. Nonetheless, there is a vulnerability to Portugal, a tendency to lose games they would not expect to, and it has existed for almost a decade.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Portugal’s coach Fernando Santos watches on during the defeat. Photograph: Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images

And it would be wrong to dismiss the achievement of Cape Verde, particularly given how disappointing they were at the Africa Cup of Nations in January, when they played grimly unadventurous football – admittedly on the unhelpful pitch in Ebebiyín – drawing all three of their group games while scoring a goal. In 2013, under the air-traffic controller and José Mourinho protegé Lúcio Antunes, they played brisk, uncomplicated football and were unfortunate to go out in the quarter-final to Ghana.

Antunes accepted an offer from the Angolan club Progresso do Sambizanga, for whom Cape Verde’s goalkeeper Vozinha plays, in December 2013 and was replaced by the former Benfica striker Rui Águas. The sense in Equatorial Guinea was that Cape Verde’s moment had perhaps passed but Águas has stayed on and victory in Estoril suggests there may be depth to their improvement. The use of the erratic CSKA Sofia creator Platini, used so sparingly at the Cup of Nations, to the right of a midfield three, perhaps suggested Águas is embracing a less cautious future.

Most encouragingly, of the 19-man squad in Portugal on Tuesday, 14 were born in Cape Verde, which lies 400 miles off the coast of Senegal. There have been efforts to trawl Europe for eligible players of Cape Verdean descent, but the majority of the squad have been developed at home. One high-profile coach at the Cup of Nations spoke dismissively of Equatorial Guinea as a “foreign legion” made up of “mercenaries” happy to accept a passport in exchange for financial reward and international football; the accusation could not be applied to Cape Verde.

“This was like a tournament game for us,” said Águas, “and we had the luck we were missing at the Cup of Nations. We could have done more but we showed more motivation and we came out happy.”

The key now is to ensure the momentum is carried into the qualifying series for the 2017 Cup of Nations, which begins in June.