HOUS­TON – De­spite be­ing thrashed 7-1 by Ger­many in their first-ever World Cup match in the Unit­ed States on Sun­day, Cu­raçao head coach Dick Ad­vo­caat does not be­lieve his side should be em­bar­rassed by the score­line.

Ger­many opened the scor­ing cour­tesy of a strike by Fe­lix Nmecha, but Li­vano Come­nen­cia’s his­toric goal in the 21st minute brought the Caribbean side lev­el, spark­ing wild cel­e­bra­tions.

How­ev­er, a dream de­but was not to be, as a dou­ble strike from Kai Havertz, along with goals by Nico Schlot­ter­beck, Ja­mal Mu­siala, Nathaniel Brown and Deniz Un­dav, en­sured Ger­many com­plet­ed a com­fort­able vic­to­ry.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, Ad­vo­caat said his side – the small­est na­tion to ever qual­i­fy for a FI­FA World Cup – had noth­ing to be ashamed about.

“This is not a dis­grace, I think we can still be proud,” the 78-year-old Ad­vo­caat said.

“This is re­lat­ed with the joy of the peo­ple in Cu­raçao. It may be a mat­ter of my age, but this is when the emo­tion comes to the sur­face. I don’t re­al­ly like it… (but) the joy of the peo­ple is fan­tas­tic.”

Ad­vo­caat said he hoped that the ex­pe­ri­ence gained against Ger­many will help as it con­tin­ues in the tour­na­ment against Ecuador on Sat­ur­day in Kansas City.

“We still have match­es to go and things can still end up dif­fer­ent­ly,” he said.

Winger Ken­ji Gor­ré said that while the team was dis­ap­point­ed with the re­sult, they were proud of their achieve­ment.

“The goal was ab­solute­ly fan­tas­tic for all of us, for the na­tion as well.

“It’s more his­to­ry be­ing made. The first goal ever scored on the world stage, it’s just phe­nom­e­nal and we’re all grate­ful that we were here to ex­pe­ri­ence it (with) all the peo­ple in the sta­di­um,” Gor­ré said.

“Mixed emo­tions, mixed feel­ings. On one side, you think, ‘Wow, we’ve made his­to­ry by com­ing to the World Cup,’ and on the oth­er, it’s like, ‘Wow, we wish that we could have got some points.” But we’re play­ing against the world’s best and the world’s best pun­ish you at every op­por­tu­ni­ty they can, and you see that they pun­ished us sev­en times from mis­takes that we made.”

Mean­while, Ger­many’s head coach Ju­lian Nagels­mann, said he was im­pressed with the fight shown by Cu­raçao.

“The op­po­nent played bet­ter than many had ex­pect­ed in Ger­many. They played with a lot of courage,” Nagels­mann said.

CMC