Four nations are set to make their World Cup debut this summer. <\/p>\n
The tiny Caribbean island of Curacao will become the smallest nation to participate in a World Cup when they take on Germany, Ivory Coast and Ecuador in Group E.<\/p>\n
Curacao, 37 miles off the Venezuela coast, has a population of a little more than 150,000 (similar to Cambridge or Huddersfield) and a land area of 171 square miles, smaller than the Isle of Man. <\/p>\n
They only became a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 2010. <\/p>\n
Cape Verde, meanwhile, are the third-smallest nation after Curacao and Iceland to reach the World Cup. The Blue Sharks secured top spot in their qualifying group ahead of African heavyweights Cameroon.<\/p>\n
An archipelago of 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean with a population of fewer than 525,000, Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and first attempted to reach the World Cup when it was held in Japan and South Korea in 2002. They face Spain, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay in Group H<\/p>\n
There are two debutants from Asia in Uzbekistan and Jordan. <\/p>\n
The Uzbeks, who were the Asian Cup semi-finalists in 2011, ended their long wait for qualification under 2006 World Cup-winning Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro.<\/p>\n
The White Wolves boast players such as Manchester City defender Abdukodir Khusanov and former Roma striker Eldor Shomurodov and will hope to make an impact in a group featuring Portugal, Colombia and DR Congo.<\/p>\n
Jordan, meanwhile, finished behind South Korea with four wins and four draws from 10 matches in the third round of the qualifiers in Asia. <\/p>\n
Ranked 64th in the world, their progress has been steady, reaching the final of the 2023 Asian Cup, when they were beaten by hosts Qatar. Argentina, Algeria and Austria await in Group J.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four nations are set to make their World Cup debut this summer. The tiny Caribbean island of Curacao…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-578069","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\/578069","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=578069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}