Curaçao's World Cup Journey: Brenet's Redemption Story
On Sunday night in Germany, a tiny Caribbean island will walk out behind a giant flag and an even bigger backstory.
Curaçao, still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands but fiercely its own, has been recognised by FIFA only since 2010. In football terms, it is a young nation. In Dutch football, its people are anything but.
Generations of Curaçaoans moved to the Netherlands. Their children and grandchildren now form the spine of this World Cup squad. Of the 26 players heading into the tournament, just one was actually born on the island. Fittingly, it is the one name most fans might recognise: Tahith Chong.
The winger once carried the weight of expectation at Manchester United, a bright academy hope with the flowing hair and easy dribble. He managed 16 competitive games for the club before a stuttering loan at Werder Bremen in 2021. Today he is at Sheffield United, one of six men in this Curaçao squad with a German chapter in their CVs.
Gervane Kastaneer spent time at 1. FC Kaiserslautern. Riechedly Bazoer tried to reboot his career at VfL Wolfsburg. Roshon van Eijma passed through Preußen Münster. Jürgen Locadia and Joshua Brenet both wore the blue of TSG Hoffenheim.
It is Brenet’s story, though, that loops most dramatically back to this World Cup opener.
From Nagelsmann’s bet to Hoffenheim outcast
In 2018, Hoffenheim paid €3.5 million to prise Brenet from PSV Eindhoven. He arrived as a three-time Eredivisie champion and a full Netherlands international, a modern right-back with pedigree. Julian Nagelsmann, then the rising star of German coaching and now in charge of the national team, pushed for the deal.
On paper, it looked smart. On the pitch and behind the scenes, it unravelled fast.
Brenet began life in the Bundesliga on the bench. Frustration simmered. Before Hoffenheim’s first-ever Champions League game, against Shakhtar Donetsk, he skipped a video session. Nagelsmann’s response was swift: he dropped him from the squad.
The coach eventually brought him back into the fold, but the trust never fully returned. Brenet’s appearances were scattered, his role shrinking as the season wore on. When Nagelsmann left, his situation worsened.
Alfred Schreuder, who would later join Nagelsmann again at the DFB, barely looked his way. Sebastian Hoeneß went even further, sending Brenet down to the reserves in the fourth-tier Regionalliga Südwest. Discipline became a recurring theme. Chronic lateness and other issues stained his reputation, and Hoffenheim struggled to find a buyer.
Only in 2022 did the club finally cut ties, allowing him to join Twente Enschede on a free transfer.
Redemption, then another fall
Back in the Netherlands, Brenet’s football started to speak for him again. At Twente, he reminded everyone why top clubs had once fought for his signature. Strong performances, attacking thrust from right-back, a sense of rebirth.
Off the pitch, he tore it all down.
In January 2023, he was caught driving without a licence twice in two weeks. He had already lost that licence in 2020 after a drink-driving offence. The pattern alarmed the courts.
“He clearly has no regard for authority. It seems to me as though he is continuing to play football after receiving a red card,” the presiding judge said, handing down a one-month prison sentence in 2024.
It was not his first serious brush with the law. In 2021, he had received a suspended sentence, including a fine and community service, for domestic violence. The new conviction, even though the prison term was later converted to community service on appeal, was the final straw for Twente. They terminated his contract.
The career that had once been mapped out among Europe’s elite suddenly drifted.
He resurfaced at Al-Rayyan in Qatar, playing just six games in the 2024/25 season. Then came a move to Livingston FC in Scotland last autumn, followed by a short stint at Kayserispor in Turkey for the second half of the campaign. Constant movement, little stability, fewer headlines.
A new flag, an old connection
Now, at 32, Brenet stands in a different shirt, under a different flag, yet about to face very familiar faces.
Despite his long history with Dutch youth teams and a senior debut for Oranje in the 2016 World Cup qualifiers, FIFA eventually granted his request to switch allegiance to Curaçao, the homeland of his parents.
Since his debut for the island in 2024, he has scored six goals in 17 appearances. That is a striking return for a right-back and a measure of his importance to this team. In the final warm-up match against Aruba, he started on the right of defence and scored again, a reminder of the threat he still carries when the game opens up.
On Sunday at 7 pm, he will walk out to open Curaçao’s World Cup campaign against Germany. On the opposite bench: Julian Nagelsmann and Alfred Schreuder, the two coaches who once deemed him surplus, troublesome, expendable.
For Curaçao, the match is a landmark, the kind of night that can reshape how a nation sees itself in football. For Brenet, it is something sharper, more personal.
After years of missteps, suspensions, and second chances, he finds himself back on the biggest stage, staring across at the men who saw his worst days up close. What does a player with that history do with a stage like this?
