“Hi Adrianna, my name is Alivia. I know that you do not know me but my grandmother was born in Fogo and I am looking to represent the team”
This is how Pembroke native Alivia Kelly reached out to FC Porto and Cabo Verde player Adriana Semedo — a few months later, they made history by debuting with Cabo Verde at the 2026 Women’s African Cup of Nations.
A national team's jersey is never just a jersey; it is a flag, a family history, a passport, a memory, and sometimes, a question no border can answer. This was evident as Kelly navigated emotions surrounding choosing to represent her family's native Cabo Verde, the jersey transforming into a vessel for connection with her grandmother, and in some ways, finally being able to embrace the Kriola from Pembroke.
“It kinda makes me teary eyed every time I am out there,” Kelly said. “Even just seeing five or six fans makes me emotional. I know they’ve sacrificed a lot for their nation to get to where they are. My grandmother has sacrificed a lot, my great grandmother has sacrificed and then obviously parents have all sacrificed a lot, so just to represent such a small, vibrant nation it is really emotional. Everytime I am like, should I be crying right now? Like lowkey I am going to start crying. It is a different type of pride knowing where your family came from.”
We spoke the morning after their heartbreaking loss to Aissata Traore’s Mali, a 3-2 defeat in which Cabo Verde scored their first WAFCON goal; Kelly also contributed by heading in the second ever Cabo Verdean goal at the tournament. Yet a second emotion was also palatable.
“Half of me is like we should be really proud that we are even here, but also we don’t ever want to get complacent’ she said. “Like a lot of people thought that our men’s team was gonna go to the World Cup and just be happy to be there. But then such a performance and all the things. I think that is how we are kinda torn between two emotions. We want to be grateful for where we are at but also looking at the future, building this up. From an emotional standpoint it’s hard. We’ve got some girls that are near retirement and others are really young; that brings its own emotions.”
Peeling back the layers, her journey to the Cabo Verdean national team starts with her parents who coached her first coed youth team before the competitive and energetic Kelly would make a move to the Scorpions.
"My parents were my first coaches; they wanted to be as involved and not as involved at the same time,” Kelly said. “If they were coaching then they were busy so I didn't have the pressure of like my parents watching and I didn’t have to perform for them”
At the Scorpions, Kelly found the competitive environment she craved. The club became a constant in her life, and she now returns to coach when she’s home, a tradition she admired as a young player watching Scorpions alumni give back.
Encouraged by her club coach, she attended Thayer Academy in Braintree, where she could challenge herself academically and athletically. There, she played alongside local standout Ally Sentnor (Angle City FC, NWSL), an experience she remembers as an important period of growth.
When it was time for college, New Hampshire State University offered the balance she wanted: far enough from home to be independent, close enough for her family to attend games. She majored in neuroscience while helping the team win a conference championship.
“My parents came for the games and then they went home,” Kelly said. “I’m so glad that I went there. Both for sports and academics. I could have opted for a better name school but I really wanted to focus on my development and my career and take it one step at a time. We had team success, winning one of the two championships in New Hampshire soccer history"
Post-graduation, a move to North Carolina State University, in hindsight, was the perfect WAFCON preparation. Here she asked to play in midfield instead of her conversant role as a ball-playing center back.
“For this tournament (WAFCON) I’m not necessarily playing my position,” Kelly said. “And so I think having moments like that in my career, now looking back I am very thankful that they happened, when they did. Because it is a lot easier when you are in a resourced college environment.”
Her professional career took her to Australia as an injury replacement at Wellington Phoenix in the A-League Women. But after her first season, she learned that the discomfort she had been feeling was a broken foot.
The summer of 2025 saw her through tough times: surgery in June, followed by months of rehab and then a second surgery. The lengthy recovery kept her off the field and out of work, creating financial and mental strain, especially as she navigated the uncertainty of being without a club.
“I kind of surprised myself,” Kelly said. “I always think it could be worse. It's bad I can't walk right now but I will be able to walk again. I focused on what I could be able to do that day. The biggest part mentally was when I was fully cleared. Now It was a waiting period if someone was going to take a chance on me.”
As she waited, some deals came close to fruition, but there was still doubt from clubs in Norway and Canada about picking up a player coming off such a destabilizing injury. The most concrete offer ended up being from FC Slovácko in the first division of the Czech league, and Kelly took it with the aim of just getting playing time. On a cultural level, this move was much further away from the A-League, as she had only one teammate who spoke English.
“It ended up working out so that I could go play and get game minutes,” she said. "At the end of the day, I just wanted to play soccer. Except for the Praag teams and one teammate, no one really speaks English”
It was that experience, being thousands of miles from home and navigating soccer in a country where she did not speak the language, that helped Kelly realize something.
Soccer is Soccer.
“That kinda inspired me to reach out to the Cape Verde team,” Kelly said. "Because my fear for so long was, 'are they going to accept me if I don’t speak Kriolu?' I didn't know the level of English but when I went to play in the Czech Republic, I was like, well, soccer is soccer no matter what. And I am so willing to learn, and as long as they are willing to work with me, this could be a real thing.
“I ended up reaching out to a girl (Adrianna Semedo) who was on the team and who I had a mutual friend with,” Kelly said. I just reached out and said, ‘hi my name is Alivia and I have Cape Verdean heritage and I would love to be in contact with someone from the team.’”
Now speaking from Morocco, Kelly is beaming as she recalls these episodes. Like many diaspora kids, she had the option to play for multiple nations, including Trinidad and Tobago, who had reached out earlier. However, her heart spoke profoundly of Cabo Verde, touched by the relationship with her grandmother.
“I am just really close with my grandma, she is a very important figure in my life,” Kelly said. “She is with us all the time. To me it was way real to represent her nation and that side of my family. I would equally feel pride to represent Trinidad but in terms of my grandmother, it was really important to rep her side”
Not able to physically attend the tournament due to high travel costs, her grandmother remained close in heart and on speed dial. When at times Kelly is trying to get a point across to teammates who don’t speak English, her grandmother can be called in to translate through video call.
Together with Kelly’s mum, she sent the team a good luck message, speaking to the team prior to the Mali game. The realization of all of this makes her emotional.
Getting into the team was one thing, but then followed the nerve-inducing quest to get her passport in time, something that four Senegalese players in similar situations were unable to do for this WAFCON.
Kelly’s passport arrived at her mother’s house two days after she had already left to visit her, prompting another quest for solutions. Once again, using her online network of friends and a resource-based group chat with other college players, they found an Ivorian player at Brown University to save the day.
“My mum was coming to visit me at the end of May in Europe, and I was going to camp (in Ivory Coast) with the team on the first of June,” Kelly said. "She was going to physically bring it to me because the mailing system in Czech is horrendous. And it (the passport) arrived two days after she left. We found an Ivory Coast player at Brown who was flying out, so my dad drove with the passport to her and she brought it in Ivory Coast to me”
An estimated 70,000 Cabo Verdeans live in Massachusetts, and Brockton is known as the “11th Island,” but growing up in Pembroke, Kelly was far removed from these vibrant communities. The national team and the jersey have become a vessel to express a pride she always carried within.
Growing up, people always questioned her about who she was and what her background was.
“Most people did not know Cabo Verde, now they do but before the World Cup and everything people didn’t really,” she said. “In Massachusetts yeah, but outside of Massachusetts no one knows what that is. So it hasn't been something I could always embrace. But even in elementary school we had to pick a country and what did I pick? I picked Cabo Verde and did a whole presentation about it. I’ve always had this pride about it, but I’ve had the ability to express it and I think now that is kinda why I get emotional about it on the pitch.”
Integration into the team was helped by teammates who are Kriola, as well as Mininu di Fora, children from the outside. The team made sure to take the squad back to Praia (capital of Cabo Verde) for a week prior to WAFCON to further this integration process and connect physically to the land.
During training camps and the tournament, teammates Sandra Soares and Sylviane Gomes helped Kelly ease into the squad.
“I can communicate with her and she helps me learn Kriolu,” Kelly said. “Sometimes we are like ‘no we are going to say it in Kriolu.’”
Her closeness to the people that understand that diaspora connections have been closer due to this shared identity and language markers.
Cabo Verde went on to be the only team that WAFCON Champions Cameroon did not beat on their way to the trophy. Cabo Verde held them to a 1-1 scoreline. Kelly played the full 90 for all three group games (vs Ghana, Mali and Cameroon), scoring one goal.
Thank you to Mohamed for allowing us to feature his interview. You can follow him on Instagram @sonofgao
