new home, Stan Sport<\/a>, is the only place to watch the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, FA Cup, WSL, European World Cup qualifiers, J.League, NSWL and K League<\/p>\nIn fact, the country is not even represented at the Olympic Games as it is not a sovereign nation. Therefore, its athletes have to compete as Independent Olympic athletes or represent the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
But one man who would be familiar to some Australian fans is the team’s head coach, who was linked with the Socceroos job almost 20 years ago. <\/p>\n
![\"Curacao](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0b621e657a7ebdaa98c5cbadcca3250de07867f0.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Curacao coach Dick Advocaat during a training session.\u00a0ANP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Dick Advocaat, head coach of Curacao, backflipped on his contract to become the next Socceroos coach in 2007 to remain at club level with Zenit St Petersburg in Russia.<\/p>\n
That contract saga unfolded just two months out from the first match of the World Cup qualifiers at the time, leaving Australia without a head coach.<\/p>\n
At the time, Advocaat declared that he was simply offered a deal too good to turn down with the Russian club team, which ultimately led him to renege on the Socceroos. <\/p>\n
Fellow Dutch manager Pim Verbeek then took over the Socceroos.<\/p>\n
Advocaat, 78, was appointed head coach of the Curacao national team last January, but was not present during Wednesday’s match to watch the players make history.<\/p>\n
As per a statement from the team, Advocaat was forced to leave the team to return home to the Netherlands due to family reasons.<\/p>\n
![\"Curacao](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/3cefb05788cf578f230bd7acca283b19ca8cb68d.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Curacao players seen in action.\u00a0Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n
See which nations have qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup below:<\/p>\n
CONCACAF [North \/ Central America and the Caribbean]<\/p>\n
Canada, Mexico, United States [host nations], Curacao, Haiti and Panama.<\/p>\n
UEFA [Europe]<\/p>\n
England, France, Croatia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and Switzerland.<\/p>\n
CONMEBOL [South America]<\/p>\n
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay.<\/p>\n
CAF [Africa]<\/p>\n
Algeria, Cape Verde, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.<\/p>\n
AFC [Asia]<\/p>\n
Japan, Australia, Iran, Jordan, Korea Republic, Uzbekistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
OFC [Oceania]<\/p>\n
New Zealand.<\/p>\n
There are six spots still open, which will be determined by sudden-death playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The small Caribbean island nation of Curacao has made football history after recording a draw against Jamaica to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-294253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Curacao](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2001c1c6f5020ede2df28b7959d9228c4e3d16f7.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n