Curacao Hold Ecuador for a Historic First World Cup Point
Goalkeeper Eloy Room made 15 saves as Curacao, the smallest nation ever to reach a World Cup, held Ecuador to a 0-0 draw in Kansas City for their first point.
Ecuador took 28 shots. They put 15 on target. They had 65% of the ball in the first half and a squad ranked more than 50 places above their opponents. They scored none of it, because Eloy Room would not let them.
Curacao's goalkeeper produced the game of his life on Saturday in Kansas City, making 15 saves to hold Ecuador to a 0-0 draw and hand the smallest nation ever to reach a World Cup its first point in the tournament's history.
It is hard to oversell how small. Curacao, an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, has a population of roughly 156,000, fewer people than a mid-sized American suburb. Four days earlier they had been pulled apart 7-1 by Germany. Saturday was supposed to be the polite second act before elimination.
Room's afternoon was a reel of chances he turned into nothing. He tipped Enner Valencia's third-minute burst around the post, smothered the former West Ham striker from close range, and clawed out a Gonzalo Plata header just before the hour. By the end Ecuador were frazzled, a substitute miscued a cross onto the top of the bar, and the Curacao players mobbed their keeper at the whistle.
The backstory complicates the fairy tale in a way worth sitting with. This is a Caribbean island side built almost entirely in the Netherlands: 25 of the 26-man squad were born there, most play their club football there, and the bench belongs to the vastly experienced Dutch coach Dick Advocaat. Curacao's football is a product of the Dutch system as much as the island's, and on Saturday the Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima were in the stands to watch it pay off.
The result reshaped Group E. Germany, who came from behind to beat Ivory Coast 2-1 in Toronto, are through to the round of 32 and, courtesy of Curacao's point, will finish top. Ecuador, second in South American qualifying and heavy favourites here, now meet the Germans on Thursday with their nerves showing. Curacao take on Ivory Coast, one of several first-week stories that has made the expanded World Cup feel genuinely open.
Group-stage draws are rarely remembered. This one will be, at least on one island in the southern Caribbean, where a goalkeeper named Room briefly made his country the hardest team in the world to beat.
