There have been many telling moments on Curacao’s unlikely journey to the World Cup. One of those came more than a decade ago when the Curacao manager, the great Dutch forward Patrick Kluivert, called goalkeeper Eloy Room and persuaded him to commit his allegiance to the Caribbean island.
The pair had something in common: Kluivert’s mother was Curacaoan, and so was Room’s father. At the time, Room had just broken into the first team of Dutch side Vitesse Arnhem and could have pursued a place playing for the Netherlands. But Kluivert convinced him that Curacao’s lofty ambition of qualifying for the World Cup was real.
