Kenji Gorré is one of a number of Dutch-born players who have qualified for the World Cup with Curaçao under former Netherlands boss Dick Advocaat, who has since had to step down
Curaçao’s journey to their first-ever World Cup was set in motion, to a degree, by Sir Alex Ferguson’s trusted Manchester United ally René Meulensteen. The Dutchman was in charge of United’s youth teams when a youngster by the name of Kenji Gorré caught the club’s eye, laying the foundations for a journey which – 24 years on – will see history made as tiny island nation Curaçao become the smallest country to play on international football’s biggest stage.
If Gorré’s name sounds familiar, and if you’re of a certain age, it may be because you remember watching his father Dean play for the likes of Huddersfield and Barnsley in the Football League.
Dean was on Barnsley’s books when Kenji reached Under-9s level and had a big choice to make. United and neighbours Manchester City were both fans but Meulensteen was the difference-maker.
“He loved the training sessions he had with René,” Dean tells Mirror Football . “He said, ‘Daddy, if he is the coach, I want to sign for them.’ So he signed for Man United and he was there for 10 years.”
Not long after those 10 years were up, Kenji had an even bigger decision to make. He had represented Holland at youth level alongside Memphis Depay and spent time with Raheem Sterling in England’s youth setup but also qualified for two more countries: Suriname, where his father was born, and his mother’s home country of Curaçao.
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“The Suriname side of the family is stronger than the Curaçao side,” Dean says. “The parties, the family, the culture, everything was more in the Suriname style than Curaçao. Until he went with Curaçao to the national team. And they changed my boy!”
Kenji made the decision at the time after being handed the chance to play at the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Years later, though, his father had also joined the party when he took over as technical director with the Curaçao football federation and he even had a spell as interim manager.
During that time, Curaçao’s pool of players has mushroomed. Dean has helped develop women’s football on the island while establishing a football academy from the Under-9 age group all the way up to senior level, with the Under-17 side close to a maiden World Cup themselves only to lose to a strong Canada side in qualifying.
A new generation
Curaçao is one of only a handful of countries to compete in World Cup qualifying which are part of a larger independent nation – something which also applies to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is a constituent country of the Netherlands and a number of members of the current squad were born on the Dutch mainland and eligible for the Oranje before declaring for Curaçao in their twenties.
All 11 of the players who started the crucial final World Cup qualifier in Jamaica were born in the Netherlands, including former Premier League players Juninho Bacuna, Leandro Bacuna and Jürgen Locadia. Make no mistake, though, they have wholly bought into the project.
“Some of them hesitated for quite a long time before deciding to play for Curaçao but once they made their choice, everyone became very positive and proud,” says Jim van der Deijl. A journalist with Dutch broadcaster Omroep West, Van der Deijl travelled to the island for the October qualifiers at home to Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, with Kenji Gorré scoring in both, before heading to Jamaica for November’s all-or-nothing match.
“The love and passion on the island is enormous,” he adds. “You can really see the players enjoying themselves when they represent Curaçao. The atmosphere is completely different from the Netherlands. It’s much friendlier and far less negative.”
For all the positivity around the camp, though, the growth hasn’t come from nowhere. A series of big-name coaches have helped boost visibility, with former Ajax and Barcelona star Patrick Kluivert a particularly big influence during two spells (one as permanent boss and one as interim), though – as Dean Gorré recognises – the process has been steady for years.
“The minute [Kluivert] was involved with the Curaçao National team, that’s where players start to realise, hey, let’s choose Curaçao,” Gorré says. “When he picked up the phone and said ‘Do you want to play for me?’ They said, ‘yes’. With Patrick, they got better players.”
He adds: “Kenji’s one of the pioneers… but there have been players before him as well. When you have real success, that’s where it starts counting.
“When the success all of a sudden came with [qualifying for the 2017] Gold Cup, people start believing ‘Hey, this is a good way to represent Curaçao as well’.”
These days, every member of the squad is playing professionally somewhere in the world – something which wasn’t always the case. The squad called up for their final qualifier included players based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, the United States, Israel, Malaysia, Greece, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia – as well as England, with Sheffield United’s former Manchester United midfielder Tahith Chong switching allegiances in August after playing for the Netherlands from Under-15 up to Under-21 level.
Big-name bosses
There has also been change in the dugout, with Guus Hiddink spending time in charge and the hotseat having also been occupied by Dick Advocaat. Journalist Van der Deijl’s day job sees him focus on Dutch Eerste Divisie side ADO Den Haag, which just so happens to be Advocaat’s hometown side and the one where he began his playing career some 60 years ago.
At 78 years of age, Advocaat was on track to be the oldest-ever manager to take charge of a World Cup match. Fans in the UK may remember Advocaat best from his spells managing Rangers and Sunderland, while he has also led out the Netherlands and South Korea at previous World Cup.
Sadly for the smallest nation at the tournament, he was forced to step down in February to care for his sick daughter, with fellow Dutchman Fred Rutten taking over. “I’ve always said that family comes before football. This is therefore a natural decision,” Advocaat said at the time.
“That said, I will greatly miss Curaçao, its people, and my colleagues. I consider qualifying the smallest nation in the world for the World Cup one of the highlights of my career. I am proud of my players, staff and board members who believed in us.”
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Advocaat approach appears to have been just what Curaçao needed for their qualifying campaign, with Van der Deijl describing him as a very passionate man. “He’s very pleasant to work with and believes strongly in realistic football,” he says. “He knows exactly what his players can and can’t do.”
What fans might not know about Advocaat is that he managed Dean Gorré at Doordrecht more than 30 years ago when they were both starting their respective coaching and playing careers. Things came full circle in January 2024 when Advocaat took the Curaçao job, naming Gorré as one of his two assistants alongside long-time No.2 Cor Pot.
“He was one of the most important, most influential coaches in my career, who I needed. And he knows that, I told him as well,” says Gorré, who would go on to represent Dutch giants Feyenoord and Ajax after leaving Doordrecht.
“As a player I learned the hard work [from him]. He’s a tough coach. He’s gone softer now, I’m thinking ‘he wasn’t like that with me’ but it was a totally different time. But as a coach, someone with his experience, one of the things I can tell you he brings is he’s a winner.
“When he makes a decision, it’s him. So he talks with everyone, with the team. When he makes a decision, it’s his decision.”
Gorré recognises the logic behind Advocaat’s approach. Almost every manager will get sacked at some point in their career and Advocaat has always made sure that when that moment arrives it will be because he stuck to his guns and succeeded or failed rather than compromising and getting sacked after putting someone else’s methods into action.
‘Responsibility’ is the word Gorré uses to describe the manager. However, when it came to the final qualifier, he had to put everything Advocaat taught him to use.
Delivering when it mattered
The expanded 48-team World Cup meant the CONCACAF confederation got six qualifying places and two inter-confederation play-off spots – compared to three guaranteed places and one play-off spot in 2022. Three of those six spots were taken by co-hosts Canada, Mexico and the United States, though, leaving Curaçao with all to play for.
They came through their first qualifying group with ease, winning four games out of four, to give themselves real hope. That saw them drawn in a final round group with Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Bermuda – with the group winners guaranteed a World Cup spot and the two best runners-up from three groups given a play-off spot.
After a draw in Trinidad and a nervy 3-2 win at home to Bermuda – where Advocaat’s side surrendered a two-goal lead before Tyrese Noslin’s second-half winner – four points from a home double-header in October kept them in contention. They won 7-0 in Bermuda while Jamaica conceded a late leveller in Port of Spain, meaning just a point in Kingston would send Curaçao through.
It’s never that easy, though. After arriving in Jamaica with his squad, Advocaat was forced to return to the Netherlands for family reasons, leaving Gorré and Pot in charge for the biggest game in the team’s history.
“Cor said straight away ‘Dean, you’re the head coach because you can’t have two captains. I’m going to assist you like I assist Dick’. So I said ‘thank you very much for the pressure!’” Gorré recalls.
“But I was a coach of the team before, so the players respect me. I didn’t do anything different, everything was the same, the build up, the only thing I had to do was put the team together.”
While he doesn’t delve too much into the specifics, Gorré says there were two key areas in the team where he had to make the final call. And, while Advocaat wasn’t in the Caribbean for the game, he was on the other end of the telephone in the lead-up.
“[We spoke] on the phone with the same sort of thing that we have normally in life,” he says. “I say [I think] this and this and he says ‘No, I don’t agree’.
“Then he said to me, ‘Dean, you can feel it when you’re there to make the decision of what you’re going to choose and what you’re going to choose it for. I cannot make the decision for you.’ Those were his exact words, ‘You have to make that decision. Because I can’t do it.’
“What I’ve learned from him is [when he says] ‘You’re now the head coach’, I’m not the assistant on that day. If I do it wrong, it’s not Dick that did it wrong. So now I have to do it my way.”
Dream becomes reality
Jamaica, then managed by former England boss Steve McClaren, were unlikely to be pushovers. They had Premier League winner Demarai Gray among their starters, with Ethan Pinnock and Bobby Decordova-Reid among the others with English top-flight experience.
The Reggae Boyz couldn’t find a breakthrough, though, and even finished the game with 10 men after a late red card. McClaren would end up resigning after the game, despite Jamaica having a second chance with the play-offs, but Curaçao were in dreamland.
“The dream was huge and belief keeps growing stronger and stronger,” Van der Deijl says. “I didn’t see any pressure, what I felt instead was an overwhelming desire to qualify for the World Cup. The entire island is incredibly proud of this achievement.”
The next task is getting results without Advocaat at the helm. However, in making it to the World Cup and getting a dream draw in the form of former winners Germany, Curaçao have already got stories to inspire generations.
“I wanted Germany or Brazil, because these for me are historical countries,” Gorré says. “In years to come, it will be like ‘2026, Curaçao -Germany, remember? Yeah I remember.’”
What’s he looking forward to the most? “Just a feeling that you’re in a World Cup. You know?” he says. “Playing against Germany, that’s got to be so special.
“In years’ time from now, people are going to say, you know, my great grandchildren are going to say, my great grandad was a coach with my grandad in the 2026 World Cup playing against Germany. Curaçao!”
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