Until a few days ago, Livano Comenencia was a name known largely to scouts, football obsessives and those who closely follow the game in the Caribbean. Then came a moment that would become unforgettable for both him and his country.
When Comenencia scored past Manuel Neuer to level the scores, it was, on the face of it, just another World Cup equaliser. For Curacao, it was history – one that opens the door to a larger question about football, identity and nationhood.
The strike marked the island’s first goal at a FIFA World Cup. It provided a fitting entry point to one of the tournament’s more intriguing questions: how can Curacao compete in the same World Cup as a constituent country of the Netherlands?
ONE KINGDOM, TWO TEAMS
To understand how Curacao and the Netherlands can share a World Cup stage, one has to travel beyond football.
Curacao is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Although it is not a sovereign state, the island enjoys significant autonomy in domestic affairs while matters such as defence and foreign policy remain the responsibility of the Kingdom. Its residents hold Dutch nationality, yet Curacao maintains its own government, institutions and, crucially for football, its own sporting identity.
That arrangement has created an unusual reality. While Curacao is linked politically to the Netherlands, it has long cultivated a distinct cultural identity shaped by its Caribbean history and society. Football has become one of the clearest expressions of that separate identity.
FOOTBALL’S ALTERNATIVE ATLAS
Football has become one of the most visible expressions of that identity. In many ways, this reflects a broader truth about football. The sport’s map does not always mirror the political one.
The United Kingdom competes as a single state in most international forums, yet England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland field separate football teams. The Faroe Islands do the same despite remaining within the Kingdom of Denmark.
THE ELEVEN WHO BECAME A NATION
The relationship between football and identity has long fascinated historians and writers. Historian Eric Hobsbawm, in Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, famously observed, “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.”
He also mentioned that few events illustrate that idea more vividly than the FIFA World Cup, where flags, anthems and football shirts become powerful expressions of belonging.
Football writer Simon Kuper advanced a similar argument in Football Against the Enemy, where he explored how football frequently acts as a mirror for societies, revealing how communities see themselves and wish to be seen by others. “Football is the medium through which the world’s hopes and fears, passions and hatreds are expressed,” read a line of his book. National teams, in that sense, are rarely just sporting entities. They often become representations of history, memory and identity.
That distinction becomes even more striking when viewed through the lens of the former Yugoslavia.
YUGOSLAVIA’S WARNINGS AND CROATIA’S RISE
In Behind the Curtain: Football in Eastern Europe, football writer Jonathan Wilson argues that football in Yugoslavia often reflected the social, political and regional tensions that ran beneath the surface of the federation. Long before the country’s eventual breakup, football clubs and rivalries had become vehicles through which competing identities found expression.
Hobsbawm argued that nations often become tangible through sport. Wilson’s account of Yugoslavia shows how the process can also work in reverse: football can reveal emerging identities before they are fully realised politically.
For much of the twentieth century, Croatia existed as one of six republics within socialist Yugoslavia. Croatian footballers represented the Yugoslav national team, which was itself a formidable force in international football. Yet the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s transformed both the political and sporting landscape of the Balkans.
Following independence, Croatia established its own national team and quickly emerged as one of football’s most compelling stories. Its third-place finish at the 1998 World Cup, less than a decade after independence, became more than a sporting achievement. For many Croatians, it symbolised the arrival of a young nation on the global stage. The country’s run to the 2018 World Cup final reinforced football’s role as a powerful expression of national identity.
The Balkans offer several examples of football’s complex relationship with nationhood. In 2006, Serbia and Montenegro arrived at the World Cup as a single team despite Montenegro having voted for independence just weeks before the tournament. By the time the competition ended, the team itself had effectively become a relic of a state that no longer existed. Football, once again, found itself navigating political realities that were changing faster than the sport’s own structures.
RECOGNITION BEYOND RECOGNITION
If Croatia demonstrates football’s role in the aftermath of statehood, Kosovo illustrates a different dimension of the relationship between sport and recognition.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but its status remains disputed by several countries. Yet in 2016, FIFA and UEFA admitted Kosovo as a member, allowing it to participate in international competitions despite ongoing disagreements over its political recognition. In many ways, Kosovo’s admission highlighted a reality that has long existed in football: the sport’s map does not always mirror the diplomatic one.
THE NATION ON THE PITCH
The comparison of Croatia with Curacao might seem imperfect but revealing.
Croatia’s football identity emerged alongside the creation of a sovereign state. Kosovo’s football identity gained international recognition even as debates over its political status continued. Curacao’s football identity, meanwhile, exists without sovereignty altogether. One represents a nation that fought for independence, another continues to navigate questions of recognition, while the third remains comfortably within a larger kingdom.
Perhaps that is football’s peculiar power. It does not merely reflect the world as it is; occasionally, it reveals the world as people imagine it to be.
Countries like Curacao, on paper, may belong to a kingdom. On the pitch, they belong to themselves.
– Ends
