There’s a scene in Dear England that sees Gareth Southgate – or Joseph Fiennes to be precise – write a single word on a whiteboard in front of his young England side. It simply says “Stories”.
Beneath it, Southgate then adds three boxes – “beginning”, “middle” and “end”.
The then England boss explains to the players how there are no shortcuts when it comes to the World Cup and that building a winning team takes time.
Having been appointed Curacao boss in January 2024, Dick Advocaat – the former Rangers, Netherlands and Sunderland boss – took a rather simpler approach.
“He got everyone together at the National Stadium, flipped over a piece of A3 paper and wrote ‘World Cup 2026’ on it,” says Raymond Mulder, Curacao’s goalkeeping coach.
“We all kind of looked at each other and thought, ‘well yeh, that would be great – but is it realistic?”
Former Rangers boss Dick Advocaat will oversee Curacao’s World Cup debut (Photo: Getty)It turns out that where there’s a will, more often than not, there’s a way.
And less than 30 months after being appointed to the job – a period that included a brief time away from the role to look after his sick daughter – Advocaat has delivered, in every sense.
The smallest World Cup nation – ever
“The sense of pride across the island is like nothing you’ve ever seen,” says Aldrich Hermelijn, editor in chief at the Curacao Chronicle. “In Curacao, we speak loudly. When tourists first come to the island, they think all we do is argue!
“We talk a lot about politics, everyone has a colour party that they associate with. Now everyone is just talking, World Cup, World Cup, World Cup.”
Curacao will be the smallest nation ever to compete at the tournament, beating the record set by Iceland in 2018.
And they arrive in the USA, Canada and Mexico having achieved the unlikely feat of not just uniting one nation. But two.
Although autonomous, Curacao is officially a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with its inhabitants enjoying the benefit of being Dutch passport holders – which in this instance has proved invaluable.
Familiar faces
There has been a huge influx of Dutch footballers on Curacao’s extraordinary journey, including some which will be more than familiar to English audiences.
Tahith Chong came through Manchester United’s academy (Photo: Getty)Juninho and Leandro Bacuna, plus Tahith Chong, Ar’jany Martha, Jurgen Locadia, Sontje Hansen and Shurandy Sambo have all played in England.
The Bacuna brothers, Chong and Martha all had a key role in Curacao’s march to the finals, but this wasn’t simply a case of footballers jumping under a flag of convenience.
Curacao players who played in UK
Juninho Bacuna – Huddersfield Town, Rangers and Birmingham City
Leandro Bacuna – Aston Villa, Reading, Cardiff City, Watford
Tahith Chong – Manchester United, Birmingham City, Luton Town, Sheffield United (current)
Ar’jany Martha – Rotherham United (current)
Jurgen Locadia – Brighton
Shurandy Sambo – Burnley (current)
Sontje Hansen – Middlesbrough (current)
“It was definitely more than that,” says Mulder. “These were players with deep family ties to the island.“There was a huge amount of pride in what they were doing, not just in the large expat communities in the Netherlands (and in particular in Rotterdam) but in Curacao too.
“People could see what playing for Curacao meant to this group.”
Everyone was brought into Advocaat’s dream.
‘We wanted the Netherlands – we’ll take Germany’
Curacao’s first World Cup qualifier against Barbados – a game which finished 4-1, thanks largely to a hat-trick by Rangelo Janga – was watched by just 4,254 people at the country’s Ergilio Hato Stadium in Willemstad.
By the end of World Cup qualifying, tickets were almost impossible to come by, with 10,000 cramming into the ground to watch the Blue Wave’s final qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago.
Qualification for this summer’s tournament has had further unexpected side effects, too.
“In a very short space of time, our tourism industry has grown exponentially – everybody wants to say, ‘Hey, we’ve been to the smallest country that has ever qualified for a World Cup,'” says Hermelijn.
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In a group alongside Germany, the Ivory Coast and Ecuador, no one is pretending that the next few weeks are going to be comfortable.
“I wanted the Netherlands, and then Argentina,” says Mulder. “But I’ll definitely take Germany instead. It’s a very tough group but this is a very tough group of players.
“Nothing we have done has been easy.”
With Advocaat returning to his role with Curacao in May – replacing Fred Rutten, who had taken on the job when the 78-year-old had initially stepped away from the job in November – they go into the tournament with renewed belief, despite recent defeats at the hands of Australia and Scotland.
Advocaat’s Curacao have already generated a story like no other. The ending is yet to be written.
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