Join The Club
The Koningin Julianabrug is a long, blue and yellow bridge, 185 feet above the ground. From there, the view across Willemstad, the capital of Curacao, is postcard-perfect. Anyone can see what makes the tiny Caribbean island – the size of Andorra, and situated less than 40 miles from Venezuela – so special.
To the south lies the town, with its colourful facades, its floating bridge and the sea. Turn to the north, and the Schottegat lagoon highlights the flares of the oil refinery, a symbol of the local economy. To the west, the rocks known as The Three Brothers cast their shadow over Piscadera Bay and symbolise the arid landscape – a breeding ground for cacti and reptiles.
In that direction, the aptly-named ‘Road to the West' winds its way through the 171-square-mile nation. Once you're outside Willemstad, the road is flanked by brightly coloured lottery kiosks and stony paths that lead to beaches and private resorts.
"Who stole our pitch?"
Regular dockings of huge cruise ships confirm that Curacao is a tourism hotspot: around half a million people visit every year. Yet the island's own local population numbers just 155,000.
This summer, it will become the smallest nation ever to play at a World Cup.
Once you get to Tera Kora in the island's north west, football pitches made of sand and pebbles vie for space with mango and banana trees. Elders laugh as they remember the days when they had to remove small stones embedded in their legs after matches.
Times have changed. In nearby Soto, the authorities are said to have spent £1.7 million replacing the sand with artificial turf. A few miles away in the town of Barber, they had to pay for a second layer after the first was stolen and chopped into hundreds of pieces, rumoured to have been used to patch up private gardens.
“The synthetic surface is safer and helps to improve the overall footballing environment,” explains Ramiro Griffith, who supported the move as president of the Curacao Football Federation (FFK) between 2022 and 2024. “It's ideal for preparing the younger generations, who will have the chance to continue their training in the Netherlands.”
Curacao's past, present and future are inextricably linked to those of a country nearly 5,000 miles away. Originally, it was a stopping-off point for sick Spanish and Portuguese sailors – legend has it that the Portuguese named it the Ilha da Curacao, or ‘the island of healing' – before the Dutch seized it from the Spanish in 1634. The Dutch West India Company made the island a centre of the Atlantic slave trade, before the practice was abolished.
After the Second World War, Curacao became part of the Netherlands Antilles, a group of half a dozen islands that also included Aruba and Bonaire. Its national team reached the final round of Central American qualifying for the 1962 World Cup.
In 2010, however, Curacao finally became a country in its own right and joined FIFA, playing its first international match a year later. There's still a large Dutch influence on various aspects of society on the island, including football.
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon at the Dr Antoine Maduro Stadium in Curacao's capital city, an under-17s friendly game between local clubs Jong Holland and SUBT attracts only a handful of parents. On the immaculate artificial pitch, the youngsters chat in Papiamento.
It is a language once used by slaves, long stigmatised and even banned by the authorities, yet now spoken by the large majority of the population. Sitting alone, Jarrod is watching the match intently.
“Training sessions are less frequent and less intense here than in the Netherlands,” explains the head of SUBT's parents' association. “All of the players in our first division have a job or go to school during the day.”
When Jarrod's son finishes high school, he will fly to the Netherlands to study and undergo trials at various clubs, with a view to turning professional. There are said to be around 150,000 people of Curacaoan origin living in the Netherlands.
It's a similar number to the population of the island itself. “First, there was a wave of Surinamese moving there in the 1970s, which led to the emergence of many footballers in the following decades, such as Patrick Kluivert, Clarence Seedorf and Edgar Davids,” Griffith says.
“In the late '90s, many Curacaoans also migrated to the Netherlands, who are now reaping the benefits of their children's talent. It's not impossible that the Oranje's defence in the near future will be partly made up of players of Curacaoan origin: Jurrien Timber, Jozhua Vertrouwd and Quilindschy Hartman.”
When he was still a youth prospect at Feyenoord, Hartman received and accepted a call-up from Curacao. His club refused to release him. Since then, the Burnley full-back has made five appearances for the Netherlands.
That call-up was part of Curacao's long-running recruitment drive for footballers of Caribbean origin, which delivered several key players. Future Southampton and Everton defender Cuco Martina played in the team's first-ever fixture in 2011, aged 21.
Leandro Bacuna made his debut in 2016 while in the Premier League with Aston Villa. A few years later, Juninho Bacuna joined his older brother in the Curacao setup.
"They burned half the city"
Remko Bicentini looks back fondly on those early days of building the squad. He was initially the team's assistant, working with Kluivert during the Ajax great's stint as national team coach between 2015 and 2016, before taking charge himself.
He smiles as he tells us, “With a squad bolstered by players from the ‘mainland', we won the Caribbean Cup, the King's Cup in Thailand and also qualified twice in a row for the Gold Cup, reaching the quarter-finals [in 2019].” Nevertheless, in the midst of the pandemic and with the first round of qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup looming, Bicentini learned from the media that he was to hand over his role to Guus Hiddink.
“He arrived just as Patrick Kluivert had done before him, thinking he was going to show us how things worked,” Bicentini says angrily.
“Hiddink completely disregarded the local culture. For example, he scrapped the party bus, where the players play music and dance on the open roof. It's a small detail but one that says a lot about the spirit of the country.”
Hiddink took charge of the first two games of World Cup qualifying, but then he contracted Covid, so Kluivert returned for Curacao's four fixtures in June 2021. They drew with Guatemala to win their group on goal difference but fell short of reaching CONCACAF's final round by losing a two-legged tie with Panama.
Covid cases among the squad then forced the Blue Wave to withdraw from the 2021 Gold Cup, just a day before it was due to kick off. Hiddink never returned, instead announcing his retirement at the age of 74.
In January 2024, another famous septuagenarian came in: Dick Advocaat, who was 76 and taking charge of his eighth different national team. “We've always known we had a lot of quality, but we needed to add that final touch,” captain Leandro Bacuna says.
“As well as having a name that attracted new sponsors, Advocaat gave us enormous self-belief and that determination to avoid being beaten at all costs.” Things had been turbulent in the months prior to Advocaat's arrival however, delaying his appointment.
Play our FREE predictor game below and get a FREE £5 bet
Former Huddersfield and Barnsley midfielder Dean Gorre, the father of current Curacao winger Kenji Gorre, stepped in as interim manager. Peter Kleine followed events closely. Born in Willemstad, he has seen it all.
He was there on May 30, 1969, when protests by oil industry workers against unfair working conditions, and anger about discrimination towards black Curacaoans, turned into the ransacking and burning of homes in the island's capital. “I was 13, and my father worked for Shell,” Kleine recalls.
“He was stuck at work, and I stayed holed up at home with the rest of my family. They burned half the city. My memory of intense fear remains vivid – but those events helped to raise awareness of the interests of the Afro-Caribbean population.”
In the days that followed, many Dutch people fled to the Netherlands. Kleine later helped to repair the ties between islanders and expats through football, becoming the secretary of local club CVV Willemstad. But, by the autumn of 2023 – in the same year that a surprise loss to St Kitts & Nevis meant Curacao failed to qualify for the Gold Cup – CVV were joining forces with others on the island to co-sign a letter calling for the entire FFK board to resign.
“They were criticised for disastrous management leading to major financial problems,” says Kleine. Effectively placed under FIFA supervision, the FFK was forced to account for the accumulation of substantial debts, which had led to star names including Leandro Bacuna, Vurnon Anita and Jurgen Locadia pulling out of international duty, with money owed to players.
“In a small country like ours, the biggest clubs always have a strong influence,” admitted a former member of the federation, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Over the past 10 years, the biggest clubs have received the lion's share of the subsidies, while some clubs don't even own their own ground.
“A great deal of money has also been spent on the national team, to improve facilities or pay for the travel expenses of Dutch players we wanted to recruit. At the same time, the national team is the driving force behind a federation's overall development.”
Football in Curacao has faced stiff competition from baseball. Per capita, the island has been the highest exporter of Major League Baseball players of any country in the world.
“Over the past 20 years, baseball has capitalised on the neglect suffered by football,” says Gilbert Martina, who was elected as the FFK's new president last year. “It has grown in popularity here, developed an extremely robust structure and attracted all of the island's sporting talent. It's served as an inspiration for football in Curacao.
“The crisis that the federation went through was linked to poor governance. We had reached a point where the clubs and federation members were no longer willing to make efforts to communicate. Financially, we're currently finalising the repayment of arrears from 2023, but we're in the black for 2024 and 2025.”
Taking on Usain Bolt
Key players were back in the squad for the start of World Cup qualifying under Advocaat, who asked interim boss Gorre to continue as part of the coaching staff. In their opening round, which began in June 2024, Curacao were drawn into the same group as Haiti, at a point when few people would have expected both to go on to reach the World Cup.
With the USA, Mexico and Canada not needing to qualify due to being co-hosts, there were another three automatic spots available for CONCACAF countries, but Panama, Costa Rica and Jamaica were the favourites.
FIFA rankings had Curacao seventh-highest among the countries taking part in qualifying, yet they impressively beat Haiti 5-1 to finish top of the group as both progressed to the final round. Once there, Advocaat's Curacao faced Steve McClaren's Jamaica, as well as Bermuda and a Trinidad & Tobago side managed by Dwight Yorke.
The group winners would go to the World Cup. Curacao drafted in former Manchester United midfielder Tahith Chong, who had previously represented the Dutch under-21s. Chong – now 26 and playing for Sheffield United – was actually born and raised in Willemstad, before being scouted by Feyenoord.
Incredibly, he is the only player in Curacao's World Cup squad who wasn't born in the Netherlands, so extensive has the recruitment drive been in recent years. After a 0-0 draw in Trinidad & Tobago, Chong scored twice on his home debut, a 3-2 win over Bermuda. It was a proud moment for Brenton Balentien, who coached him in the under-11s at local club Atletiko Salina.
Balentien is another recognisable face among Curacao fans, largely because he paints it blue every time they play. “It gets hard and sticky when it dries on a beard,” he laughs. He hasn't missed a moment of his country's rise to 82nd in the FIFA rankings.
Curacao's finest moment so far was undoubtedly their final World Cup qualifier in Jamaica last November. Having beaten the Reggae Boyz 2-0 in Willemstad, then drawn at home to Trinidad & Tobago and triumphed 7-0 in Bermuda, the Blue Wave went into their last match needing a point to seal a historic place at the World Cup.
Two days before the game, Advocaat had to leave the camp due to family reasons. Gorre stepped up to take over the side once more, but Curacao would be without their experienced manager as they walked into a cauldron of an atmosphere in Kingston.
“I'd never had that sort of experience before,” says Balentien. “There were 180 of us from Curacao – a mere speck in a stadium of 35,000 frenzied Jamaicans. For us, coming from such a small country, it was absolutely intimidating.”
Buoyed by a pre-match talk from Usain Bolt, Jamaica hit the woodwork three times, then were given a penalty in stoppage time. “My heart stopped for a few seconds,” Balentien admits. Dramatically, the decision to award a penalty was overturned by VAR, and Curacao held on to draw 0-0.
They had become the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup, surpassing the record set in 2018 by Iceland, which is more than twice as populous. “On our return, there was a massive parade organised across the island,” Balentien explains.
“Everyone came out of their homes to celebrate. Curacao is an incredibly multicultural island made up of Spaniards, Asians, Dominicans and many other nationalities, but on that day, I really felt we were one big family. We're a small community where everyone knows each other.”
At 78, Advocaat will be the oldest manager in World Cup history. He stepped down in February with his daughter undergoing chemotherapy. Former PSV and Feyenoord boss Fred Rutten replaced him.
In Willemstad, locals are preparing to paint all of the capital's buildings blue, from schools to businesses, in time for the World Cup. Balentien will be among 2,500 or more fans travelling to support Curacao in person, although he knows that matches against Germany, Ecuador and Ivory Coast will be tough.
“We want to leave a good sporting impression of ourselves, but whatever the result, we'll be celebrating,” he says, smiling. Already, Curacao have made history.
Italy will not be at the tournament. Nor will seven of the planet's 10 most populated countries – between India, Nigeria, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Russia, there are nearly four billion people. Curacao, in contrast, has only 155,000.
In nearly a century of the World Cup's existence, there have been few more remarkable tales.
