Soccer-I preferred my old life, says Cape Verde World Cup hero Vozinha

Vozinha kept clean sheets against eventual champions ​Spain and Saudi Arabia with his ​exceptional goalkeeping to help ‌Cape Verde ​reach the World Cup round of 32 this year, but the 40-year-old feels powerless to cope with the ‌intense attention that fame has brought his way. Cape Verde, a collection of islands near Africa's west coast with a population of some 500,000, surprisingly reached the knockout stage ‌in their first appearance at the global tournament before losing 3-2 to Argentina.

Vozinha, ‌whose performances earned him a Yashin Trophy nomination for the year's best goalkeeper, has become a global star, with his Instagram follower count ballooning from 56,000 to 28 million people. “I’ve lost my ⁠peace and ​tranquillity. I no ⁠longer have any privacy," Vozinha told Britain's Observer newspaper.

"I go to a restaurant, and there’s always ⁠someone who wants to take a photo with me or asks me for an autograph. ​Or worse, someone's filming me... I don’t think there’s anything I can do ⁠about it." His family members have also been affected, with fans showing up daily at his mother's ⁠house ​in Cape Verde.

“I’m not there, so I can’t help them,” said Vozinha, who left Portuguese second-tier club Chaves to join Chile's Colo-Colo in July. “A lot of ⁠people want to be famous... but they only see the positive side of that ⁠reality. To be ⁠honest, if I were offered the life I have today or the life I had before, I’d choose the one ‌I had ‌before.”