"He has never left," defender Livano Comenencia said of Dick Advocaat. And in a way, that's exactly right.
The 78-year-old Dutch manager stepped down from the Curaçao job late last year when his daughter's health deteriorated. It was the right call. But after a chaotic interlude under Fred Rutten — which included a 5-1 hammering by Australia and a 2-0 loss to China — Curaçao came calling again. By May, with his daughter's condition improved, Advocaat was back.
When he returned, the dressing room hadn't missed a beat. Music, dancing, prayer. The culture he built was still running.
A family reunion before Germany
Advocaat is the one who got Curaçao here. He took over in January 2024 and guided the tiny island nation to its first-ever World Cup qualification — sealed with a 0-0 draw against Jamaica in November 2025. That's the context. The turbulence that followed his departure only underlined how much the squad was his.
"Even though we had another manager, we still wanted to end it with him because we started it with him," winger Arjany Martha said. "We're one family and as a family, we want to start something and finish it together."
That's not sentiment for the cameras. It held up through a coaching change, a pair of embarrassing results, and an international break's worth of uncertainty. The belief in Advocaat was structural, not decorative.
On June 14, Curaçao open against Germany. When Advocaat walks out for that game, he becomes the oldest manager in World Cup history — his third tournament at the helm of three different nations across four decades of coaching. Anyone pricing up the Germany match should note that Curaçao's squad genuinely believes they belong there. That kind of collective confidence, built slowly and almost lost, is harder to quantify than a group-stage odds line.
What Advocaat actually built
The approach is worth understanding. Curaçao's players aren't being drilled into a system and told to stay in their lanes. Advocaat gives them room.
"We like to put on a lot of music, we like to dance," Comenencia said. "He just let it be. Not every coach is like this."
For a squad of players who aren't household names — who needed belief more than tactics — that environment matters. Advocaat has coached across the globe for 40 years. He knows what a dressing room needs. Sometimes it's structure. Sometimes it's just space.
"I'm Dutch," he said, "but I think working for two years in Curaçao makes me a true Curaçao national."
Germany await. And the oldest manager at this World Cup isn't thinking about his legacy. He's thinking about the ball — which, as Martha put it, is still round.
