Smallest nation with the biggest point
For ignorant millennials, the FIFA World Cup was a better atlas than geography lessons at school. Korea-Japan 2002 taught us where Henri Camara’s Senegal was located. Germany 2006 made it impossible not to know about Andriy Shevchenko’s Ukraine. South Africa 2010 prompted a generation to learn about Asamoah Gyan’s Ghana. Had USA-Mexico-Canada 2026 been played in that era, we would have run into a problem. We would have scoured through the world map to find Curacao — the team that restricted Ecuador to a 0-0 stalemate on Sunday — and found nothing. They are a tiny dot on a physical map. Senior & Co., Curaçao’s oldest distillery and the producer of the original Blue Curaçao liqueur, acknowledges the irony on its website: “The funny thing is that now many people know the term Blue Curaçao, but don’t know that Curaçao is also an island.” And you would not be accused of geographical blasphemy for the same. The island has a population of 158,000. Ranked 189th. They have an area of 444 square kilometres. ALSO READ …
