Curacao National Football Team Set for World Cup Debut as Smallest Nation
The curaçao national football team is set to make its World Cup debut as the smallest nation ever, by size and population, to take part in the tournament. Curacao won all four games in its first qualifying group and stayed unbeaten in the second, putting the island in position to reach football’s biggest stage for the first time.
Gilbert Martina Turns Blue
Gilbert Martina said the reaction at home has moved beyond ordinary celebration. “It brings so much joy and pride to the island that you can't describe it. The whole island is turning blue,” the Curacao Football Federation president said. That image fits the scale of the moment: an island of 158,000 preparing for a World Cup debut in Houston.
The squad also carries a sharp contrast in where it comes from. Only one player, Tahith Chong, was born on the island, while the other 25 players were born in the mainland Netherlands. Curacao is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and is not a fully sovereign nation, yet it has assembled a group that has turned a long qualifying run into a place in Group E with Germany, Ecuador and Ivory Coast.
Advocaat’s 78-Year Benchmark
Dick Advocaat will become the oldest boss in World Cup history at 78, and the journey to this point began long before this qualifying cycle. The federation started hiring big-name Dutch managers in 2015, the same year Eloy Room became the first member of this squad to play for Curacao. Leandro Bacuna followed in 2016, and the roster has since grown around that shift.
Eighteen players in the squad have represented the Netherlands at youth levels, while Riechedly Bazoer and Joshua Brenet have both won senior caps for the Netherlands. That mix explains how Curacao, still smaller than the Isle of Man, is bringing a squad built largely from the diaspora to a tournament it had never reached before.
Bacuna’s Long Run
Leandro Bacuna has been part of that change from the start, and he said the team still feels the weight of what it has done. “We've done something so nice for Curacao. I started this journey 10 years ago and wanted to make the people from Curacao proud,” he said. Bacuna also pointed to the standard inside the camp: “The manager keeps saying we are not finished. We want to show people as small as we are, we have a big heart. If you have a big heart I believe you can get far.”
That challenge now moves into Houston, where thousands of Blue Wave fans are expected for Curacao’s World Cup debut, including some taking same-day charter flights from the island. Curacao will face Germany on Sunday at 18:00 BST, carrying a first appearance built on eight qualifying games without a loss and a squad that has already changed what a small Caribbean nation can send to the World Cup.
