{"id":2027,"date":"2025-11-19T03:54:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T03:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2025-11-19T03:54:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T03:54:30","slug":"curacao-makes-history-as-smallest-nation-by-population-to-qualify-for-a-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/?p=2027","title":{"rendered":"Curacao Makes History as Smallest Nation by Population To Qualify for a World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subnav-title ff-ffc bold fs-23 lh-25 uc pd-b-10\">\n            POPULAR SEARCHES\n          <\/p>\n<p class=\"subnav-title ff-ffc bold fs-23 lh-25 uc pd-b-10\">\n            BROWSE BY\n          <\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9>Cura\u00e7ao salvaged a 0-0 draw with Jamaica on Tuesday to become the smallest nation by population to qualify for a World Cup and will be joined by CONCACAF sides Panama and Haiti which also booked their spots.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9>Cura\u00e7ao finished as the only undefeated nation in the tournament and finished atop of Group B with 12 points to advance to the World Cup for the first time in its history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9>Curacao got the historic result it needed despite not having his coach Dick Advocaat. on the bench. The 78-year-old Advocaat missed the crucial match because he had to return to the Netherlands last weekend for family reasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9>Advocaat was at the helm of the Netherlands national team for three stints and managed South Korea, Belgium and Russia before taking the job with Curacao.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9>According to the Central Bureau of Statistics in Cura\u00e7ao, the country has a population of 156,115 persons as of last January. Iceland, with a population of just over 350,000 was the smallest country to reach the World Cup when it qualified for the tournament in Russia in 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9><i>Reporting by The Associated Press.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-b1ca39d9><i>Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? <\/i><i><u>Create or log in to your FOX Sports account<\/u><\/i><i>, and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Cura\u00e7ao salvaged a 0-0 draw with Jamaica on Tuesday to become the smallest nation by population to qualify for a World Cup and will be joined by CONCACAF sides Panama and Haiti which also booked their spots. Cura\u00e7ao finished as the only undefeated nation in the tournament and finished atop of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}