On a wet Tuesday evening last November, in a stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, 11 men in royal blue did nothing for 90 minutes—and made history. Curacao, the Dutch Caribbean island best known for its golden beaches and electric blue liquor, drew Jamaica out of the draw, and in doing so took a place in the FIFA World Cup 2026 for the very first time.
Curacao is a country with about 156,000 people. Like The Associated Press notedThe MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the World Cup final will be played on July 19, has about half the capacity of all the residents of Curaçao.
That same month, on the other side of the planet, India’s Supreme Court was once again hearing a case over the constitution of the All India Football Federation, or AIFF, which governs the Indian Premier League. A long-term conflict involving politics in the federation, payment disputes with the company that runs the league, and the intercession of the courts have fixed the position of the league. 2025-26 season “hold on.” The top eleven clubs in the country wrote a joint letter to the federal president warning that professional football in India was “paralysed.” The league finally started its 12th season shortened by five months at the end of February 2026, with the Asian Football Confederation forced. grant India have been charged a season from the mandatory minimum of 24 matches.
Some of the instability in the confederation has plagued the national team, which is currently under its third head coach since being eliminated in the second round of World Cup 2022 qualifiers. This time, the Blue Tigers of India’s hopes were dashed after they finished third in the group of four behind Qatar and Kuwait and ahead of only Afghanistan.
Curacao, then, is going to the World Cup. India—population 1.47 billion, the largest country on Earth—doesn’t exist. And this despite the fact that the 2026 tournament was increased from 32 to 48 teamsand the Asian confederation’s qualification quota almost doubled, allowing nine teams from the region to reach the final stage.
What? What explains this difference? The answer lies in the way Curacao has embraced its athletics tourism while India has consistently refused to do the same.
It is one of football big mistakes that India never passed the qualifying stages of the World Cup. The sport has deep roots in India: the Durand Cup, contested by Indian clubs and teams representing its armed forces, It is the oldest football tournament in Asia. It was first played in 1888, the same year as the launch of the English Football League. Nor has India lacked excellence in the game historically. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was an Asian football giant, winning gold at the Asian Games in 1951 and 1962, and finishing. four at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
The problem with Indian football, in other words, is not the lack of a foundation. It is the result of the choices that the country has made on those bases.
The first of those choices was made in 1950, and it set the template. After qualifying for the World Cup in Brazil by default—every other team in its Asian region had withdrawn—the AIFF pulled out, citing travel expenses that FIFA had offered to pay in large part. A popular myth is that FIFA was responsible for clapping, and Indians preferred to play barefoot. But the then captain, Sailen Manna, has rejected this for decades, and most football historians now agree that the AIFF is only considered The Olympics is the most prestigious event.
India was punished for this contempt by being eliminated from the next World Cupand then completely refused to enter the playoffs until 1985. No system rebounds quickly from three and a half decades apart.
Another choice, made by fans rather than federations, is often invoked to explain the struggles of Indian football: Indians chose a different sport to care about. Cricket commands about 85 percent of all sports viewers in India. The Indian Premier League, the world’s top club cricket competition, attracted more than 600 million viewers last year, with nearly $600 million in advertising revenue. This means that, unlike the struggling Indian football federation, the Board of Control for Cricket in India is one of the richest sporting bodies in the world.
But the Indian appetite for cricket cannot be a complete explanation, because Indian football fans exist in numbers that should put every other excuse to shame. Global audience data for the English Premier League (EPL), information by Win Sports Online and others, counted 147 million EPL fans in India, more than double the population of the UK. of YouGov FootballIndex puts Manchester United at the top of the brand association table among consumers in India – ahead of any home side.
That a country with 147 million EPL fans cannot produce a team capable of beating Afghanistan twice is to use a Hindi/Urdu term, ajeeb– wonderful. This is where greater structural detail is needed, which Curacao’s success demonstrates well.
The 156,000 residents of the Caribbean island did not make up the team based on their numbers alone. Instead, it applied FIFA’s eligibility rules logically yield his Dutch diaspora. Five players who once represented the Dutch youth and U-21 teams changed their allegiance in August last year. One of them, defender Joshua Brenet, even played in a World Cup qualifier for the Dutch in 2016. Tahith Chong, Manchester United’s producer, is one of the few players in the squad born on the island. The coach is 78-year-old Dutch veteran Dick Advocaat, on his third World Cup.
FIFA eligibility ruleswhich are changed every few years, allow a player to join any national team whose passport he has—as long as he can demonstrate a strong connection to the region: birth there, a parent or grandparent born there, or, failing that, a period of residence (two years, or five if born a citizen as an adult). Usually, once a player plays a senior competitive match, he is married to that “sporting nationality” for life, and a narrow one-time switch is available to young players who jump ship before they get more than three matches. But exceptions are allowed, as was the case with Brenet.
Indonesia, which also he tried to touch his Dutch diasporahe decreased. But this sports book over the years has served many countries seeking development in the World Cup. Morocco qualified for the semi-finals in 2022 and a squad made up largely of foreign-born players who are stars in major European leagues. Cape Verde (pop. approx. 530,000), which will join Curacao as the first presenter this time, used LinkedIn to recruit playersincluding Irish-born centre-back Roberto Lopes.
India is not playing this game. As in the case of many Asian countriesIndia’s citizenship law does not allow dual citizenship, and holders of foreign passports cannot represent a sovereign nation. Football fans debate the question every round, Indian football newspapers write long (and ambitious) pieces about players of Indian origin. running their business in Europe—Adrian Pereira of Rosenborg in Norway, Sai Sachdev of Sheffield United in England, and Yan Dhanda of Heart of Midlothian in Scotland, to name just three. But the government has shown no intention of changing its long-standing approach to citizenship law to meet the demands of the soccer nation.
New Delhi has spent the last decade aggressively courting its diaspora politically and economically. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Pravasi conference “Bharatiya Divas” (India Day) is currently scheduled as the premiere of Bollywood. But on the football field, the door is closed. The Curacao soccer pool covers the Caribbean-Dutch districts of Rotterdam. India does not develop beyond its borders.
Sunil Chhetrithe recently retired Indian captain, has 95 international goals to his name. Like Wikipedia’s tally has itonly three men in football history have scored more for their country: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Iranian striker Ali Daei. Chhetri scored 157 goals in a span of 20 years, but never made it to the game’s biggest stage. The fact that the most famous Indian player of the modern era can spend two decades at the front of the queue and never make it to the door is, in itself, a verdict on the system that produced him.
The qualification of Curacao and Cape Verde, then, is less a football curiosity than a quiet rebuke of India. What the islanders did was read the FIFA rule book as a tool and use it. India still treats its citizenship law as a statement of identity and refuses to amend it to serve any sporting purpose.
While young, Curaçao has worked, it’s not the same as being weak—as long as you’re honest about who you are and where your countrymen live. Being big, the Indian football establishment still seems to believe, equals being strong, and 1.4 billion people must, at some point, produce a world-class squad. They have produced so far FIFA ranking of 136behind every other country in this World Cup and many of those that did not make it.
When the FIFA Council voted in January 2017 to expand the World Cup to 48 teams, Indian industrialist-politician Praful Patel, executive vice-president of the Asian Football Confederation—who was also president of the AIFF before he was dismissed by the Supreme Court—he told ESPN that the additional places in Asia will help promote football in countries like India and China. Three years later, Patel inspired his countrymen have a dream to play 2026.
Instead, it is the people of Curacao whose dreams will come true. Next month, the smallest nation in the tournament’s history will face Germany in Group E. The world’s biggest nation will be watching, as they do at every World Cup, from the sidelines.
