Curacao. Remember the name of this island, well known as a paradisiacal tourist destination and for the Curaçao Blue drink, located in the south of the Caribbean Sea, 65 km from the north coast of Venezuela.
She will be at a World Cup next year for the first time.
This fact wouldn’t even be a huge news, because, with the competition expanding to 48 teams, making it the largest of all in terms of quantity, other countries will also debut (Cape Verde, Jordan, Uzbekistan).
By drawing goalless as a visitor with Jamaica at the Independence Park stadium, in Kingston, Curaçao secured one of the places allocated to Concacaf (a confederation that brings together North and Central America and the Caribbean) for the 2026 World Cup.
When arriving at one of the competition’s headquarters (USA, Canada and Mexico) and entering the field, it will become the smallest country to participate in the World Cup, which from 1930 to 2022 featured 80 different nations. FIFA, in its ranking, lists 211 teams – Curaçao occupies 82nd place.
Smaller both in area and population. The island, which separated from the Netherlands Antilles in 2010, becoming an autonomous country, has an area of 444 km², slightly larger than that of the municipality of Arataca (436 km²), in the south of Bahia, and a population of 156 thousand, slightly smaller than that of the city of Toledo (160.7 thousand), in the west of Paraná.
The previous record for the country with the smallest area to go to a World Cup belonged to Trinidad and Tobago (5,128 km²), participant in the 2006 German World Cup, and that for the nation with the fewest people, Iceland, with close to 350 thousand inhabitants in the 2018 Russian World Cup.
Furthermore, Curaçao can establish another milestone in the World Cup that starts in June, contrasting with its “youth”: that of senescence, in the figure of its coach, Dutchman Dick Advocaat.
At 78 years old, if he remains in charge of the Curaçao team, he will be the oldest coach ever present in the hottest football competition there is.
In the 22 editions of the World Cup, the oldest person holding the clipboard was the German Otto Rehhagel, who was 71 years old at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, ahead of Greece.
Advocaat, however, will not be a rookie in the World Cup like Curaçao. He coached the Netherlands in the USA-1994, losing in the quarterfinals to later champion Brazil, and South Korea in 2006, stopping in the group stage.
Responsible for the Caribbean island’s victorious and undefeated campaign in the Concacaf Qualifiers (seven wins and three draws), Advocaat was not on the bench precisely in the qualifying game, in Jamaica. He claimed private problems and left the delegation four days before the confrontation. One of his assistants, Surinamese Dean Gorré, took over.
In the squad of 23 athletes that qualified Curaçao for the World Cup, all were born in the Netherlands.
The team’s stars, responsible for most of the goals and articulating the plays, are the Bacuna brothers: Leandro, 34, who captains the team, and Juninho, 28, both midfielders, both with experience in British football, both currently in Turkey.
Due to its peculiarities, Curaçao should be one of the characters most focused on in the draw for the World Cup groups, at the beginning of December.
You will still read and see a lot of him until the World Cup. Even more so if the little ball with your name appears in the Brazil group.
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