The Bench of Curaçao

The Bench of Curaçao

16 November 2025

What struck me most in the penultimate match of the national team against Bermuda was the bench – the reserve players. After the third or fourth goal, Dick Advocaat substituted a handful of players; he took nearly all the star players off the field. And… the team kept playing well and even extended the score to the final 7–0.

What does this tell us? Curaçao has more talent. There is even talent that is not on the bench at all: players who are holding off, hoping to be called up for Oranje. I won’t mention names.

If you extend that analogy, you see the same pattern outside of football. In baseball, in other sports – but especially in our national governance – we often don’t call up the best players. We field Family & Friends, and we lose spectacularly. In the absence of other metrics, just look critically at performance and the annual reports. And still, we insist that we are winning.

Even in tourism, where we supposedly break records, we are not truly winning when we look critically. The alleged gains come at the expense of people who do not earn a decent income and of our natural environment. Fortunately, this reality is slowly sinking in.

When forming our selection – choosing who gets to play for the country – we do not focus on who can actually get the job done. Instead, it’s about whom we favour and who reinforces our power. That is not how we are going to win the (foot)game. Winning and losing are part of the game. Even during recruitment and selection, it becomes clear that the (political) elite does not want to win collectively but instead pursues personal or group gain.

Miguel Goede