THE OTHER NATIONAL TEAM · CURAÇAO
During the men’s World Cup, FemGol will trace the history of some of the women’s national teams from the countries taking to the pitch. Because a country’s football doesn’t fit in a single team.
Tonight, Curaçao face Ivory Coast with their first World Cup still alive.
The least-populated territory ever to play the tournament have already scored their first goal and earned their first point. They need to win, and to look across at Ecuador-Germany too, to find out whether they can stretch their debut beyond the group stage.
For the men, a win tonight can open the door to the next round.
The women’s team knows a much stranger equation.
In 2023 they won all of their matches.
They did not qualify for any cup.
They were promoted to a division they never got to play.
Four from four
The first CONCACAF Women’s Gold Cup introduced a qualifying system split into three tiers.
Curaçao started in League C, the lowest of them. Their group was completed by the Cayman Islands and Anguilla, two teams also sitting at the bottom of international football.
There were only four matches.
Curaçao won all four.
They began with a 2-0 away win over the Cayman Islands. They then hosted Anguilla and won 5-2. In November they faced the same opponents again and confirmed that those first results had been no accident.
They beat Anguilla 5-1 away.
They closed the group with a 6-1 against the Cayman Islands in Willemstad.
Twelve points out of twelve. Eighteen goals scored and four conceded.
They left nothing undone.
Kadisha Martina’s night
Promotion was settled on 30 November 2023, in Anguilla.
Curaçao won 1-5 and Kadisha Martina scored four goals. Taïsha Hansen completed the result.
Martina had already opened the scoring in the 5-2 against the same side in the previous match. Four days after securing first place, she scored twice again in the final rout against the Cayman Islands.
Seven goals in the group’s last three games.
Curaçao had not needed to protect narrow leads or calculate margins. They had won with authority and turned Martina into the figure of a perfect campaign.
The federation presented the promotion as a historic moment. The players returned to the island with a public invitation for fans to come to the airport to welcome them.
There was still one match left, but they had already achieved their goal.
The problem was working out what the prize had really been.
Winning without qualifying
The competition was called the Road to the W Gold Cup, but not every road reached the tournament.
The three League A group winners earned a direct place in the final stage. The three League A runners-up and the three League B winners advanced to a preliminary round.
League C winners reached neither.
Curaçao could win four matches, gather twelve points and score eighteen goals. None of it allowed them to play the 2024 Gold Cup.
The result of their campaign was something else: promotion to League B.
It was not an immediate route to the tournament. Nor a place to compete against any of the teams already a step away from reaching it.
It was the right to leave the bottom rung.
Next time, in theory, Curaçao would start from a higher tier. They would no longer have to face Anguilla and the Cayman Islands to prove they were above them. League B would offer tougher opponents and, if they won it, a route to the Gold Cup preliminary round.
They had won everything they could win.
They had not qualified.
But they had gone up.
The division that vanished
The chance to compete in that League B never came.
In September 2024, CONCACAF presented a new structure for its women’s competitions. The next qualifiers would no longer repeat the League A, League B and League C model used on the road to the Gold Cup.
The system through which Curaçao had been promoted disappeared before the next cycle.
The promotion remained part of the official record of that campaign. The players had won their group and formally left the bottom tier.
But they never got to play the division they had conquered.
When Curaçao competed for a major tournament again, the starting point no longer depended on that qualification. They did not begin in a League B sheltered among teams of a similar level.
They were placed in a single group alongside Panama, Cuba, Aruba and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
The prize earned with four wins did not shape the new road.
CONCACAF had changed the map before Curaçao could reach their destination.
An intermittent team
After the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, Curaçao inherited a women’s international history dating back to 2006.
But the team’s activity was very irregular. The side spent long stretches without playing official matches, did not take part in the road to the 2015 World Cup and put together small competitive spells separated by years with very few games.
Curaçao’s own Federation acknowledged that the senior team was starting to compete more regularly and that it still needed to build an infrastructure where girls and women could progress in football.
The 2023 campaign had offered a first measure of its growth.
Curaçao could overcome the teams of its immediate surroundings. It had a goalscorer capable of deciding matches, young players coming into the side and a base solid enough to complete a group stage without losing.
What it did not yet know was how much that team would hold up when the level rose.
The answer came in the next cycle.
Not in the League B they had won the right to play.
In a completely new group.
Sixteen goals against
The 2025 and 2026 CONCACAF qualifiers dropped the division into leagues.
Curaçao were drawn with Panama, Cuba, Aruba and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Only the top team in the group advanced to the CONCACAF Championship, a tournament that was also part of the road to the 2027 World Cup in Brazil.
The difference from 2023 showed immediately.
Panama won 6-1 in Willemstad.
Cuba then won 3-0.
The third match was meant to offer a closer benchmark. Aruba share with Curaçao a history, a geography and a natural rivalry within the former Netherlands Antilles.
It also ended in defeat.
Aruba won 6-1 at the Rignaal Jean Francisca stadium. Amazia Burnet scored the only home goal, but the visitors found the net four times in the final half hour.
Curaçao had now lost four qualifying matches in a row, counting the last game of their previous World Cup cycle. It was the worst run of results in their history in the competition.
The new format did not confirm the dominance of 2023.
It exposed its limit all at once.
Curaçao had been too strong for Anguilla and the Cayman Islands. They were still a long way from Panama and Cuba.
The defeat to Aruba added a more uncomfortable conclusion: it was not enough to look only towards the most powerful sides in the group either.
From the first minute to 90+1
Curaçao reached the last match with no chance of finishing top.
They were away to Saint Kitts and Nevis. Both teams occupied the bottom two places and were looking to end the group stage with their first win.
The match began in the worst possible way.
Sherema Blake put Saint Kitts and Nevis ahead in the first minute.
Curaçao took almost an hour to respond. Shi-Jona Martina equalised in the 58th minute with a shot from the edge of the box.
The 1-1 seemed set to close out both teams’ participation without a win.
Then Amazia Burnet appeared.
The same player who had scored against Aruba received the ball far from goal and shot from outside the area. It went in the 90+1 minute.
Curaçao won 2-1.
They finished fourth, with three points, four goals for and sixteen against. Panama advanced with a perfect record; Cuba and Aruba also finished above them.
There was no qualification, no promotion and no trophy.
Just a win in the last minute.
But that goal stopped the cycle ending purely as a correction. Curaçao had discovered the distance separating them from Panama, Cuba and even Aruba, and still managed to leave the tournament edging forward by a few centimetres.
In 2023, winning four times had served to conquer a division that disappeared.
In 2026, a single win granted nothing.
At least this time the result belonged to the same system in which they would have to keep growing.
Looking for more players
A few days after the qualifiers ended, the federation organised open trials for the women’s national team.
The call-out summed up the state of the project.
Curaçao already had a senior side, a recognisable goalscorer and players able to compete internationally. It also needed to widen the base, find new players and stop each cycle depending on a group that was too small.
The island has an advantage and a difficulty that look very much alike.
Its size makes it possible to spot talent, connect the players and build a shared identity. But it reduces the number of clubs, matches and players available to raise the level of training.
In 2023 it was enough to dominate League C.
In 2026 it was not enough to compete on equal terms with the best teams in their group.
The aim cannot consist only of repeating a perfect campaign against the same opponents. It must get the team to play enough matches that each rise in level does not turn into a fall.
It also needs the road to keep its shape long enough to be travelled.
The prize for winning
Tonight, the men’s team needs to beat Ivory Coast and look across at Ecuador-Germany too, to find out whether they can achieve something the country has never lived through: reaching the knockout stage of a World Cup.
The women know a much stranger way of winning without advancing.
In 2023 they won all four of their matches, scored eighteen goals and were officially promoted to League B.
They did not play the Gold Cup.
Nor did they ever play in League B.
When they competed again, that structure no longer existed.
In 2026 they lost three matches, conceded sixteen goals and finished fourth. The new format showed them the distance that still separated them from Panama, Cuba and Aruba, but at least it let them close the cycle with a win in the 90+1 minute.
The two campaigns do not contradict each other.
The first showed that Curaçao were too strong to stay at the bottom tier.
The second began after the level they had climbed to had disappeared.
The men play tonight to reach the next round.
The women won four times to reach a division they could never play.
