Trinidad and To­ba­go’s se­nior men’s foot­ball team ar­rived in Willem­stad, Cu­ra­cao, at around 5 pm on Tues­day (Sep­tem­ber 29), ahead of to­day’s Con­ca­caf Na­tions League (CNL) match against the FI­FA World Cup debu­tantes who cur­rent­ly top League A’s group A with a per­fect six points.

Fol­low­ing their first-ever FI­FA World Cup ap­pear­ance in June, Cu­ra­cao, al­so called ‘The Blue Wave,’ has con­tin­ued to write its sto­ry as the Caribbean’s newest force of na­ture.

The Dutch is­landers forged a for­mi­da­ble come­back away to Cos­ta Ri­ca in game one on Sep­tem­ber 24, over­turn­ing a 3-0 first-half deficit to leave San Jose with a 4-3 win. Fol­low­ing that, the Blue Wave swept aside Nicaragua in Willem­stad 6-1 on Sun­day in front of a fa­nat­i­cal home base to notch their ninth com­pet­i­tive win at home in their last 10 ap­pear­ances.

Now, as they get ready to wel­come the So­ca War­riors, Cu­raçaoan mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist Lilo Sul­varan told Guardian Me­dia Sport that the War­riors could ex­pect a dif­fer­ent side of Cu­raçaoan hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

“The fans here are very Caribbean. You’re al­ways wel­come here as a col­league of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union. I’ll tell you hon­est­ly, our sup­port­ers are 100% sup­port­ing both teams, but of course, with a pref­er­ence for our na­tion­al team. When T&T ar­rived, it was all wel­comes and ap­plause, wish­ing you guys all the best. But in the sta­di­um, it’s go­ing to be dif­fer­ent.”

Sul­varan an­tic­i­pates an­oth­er sold-out au­di­ence at the Ergilio Ha­to Sta­di­um to see their he­roes take on the So­ca War­riors.

“I mean, it’s the sec­ond time our team will play (at home) since the World Cup. So, I mean, that sta­di­um is go­ing to be full. We have a ca­pac­i­ty of 10,000, but we per­mit 9,000. So I think it’s go­ing to be a full house. We are not go­ing to be hos­tile at all, but we are sup­port­ing our na­tion­al se­lec­tion.”

The Cu­ra­cao na­tion­al team’s un­beat­en run at the Ergilio Ha­to Sta­di­um (9 wins, 1 draw, 0 loss­es) en­cap­su­lates CNL and FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fy­ing fix­tures go­ing back to Oc­to­ber 17, 2023. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, their rich form at home be­gan with a 5-3 win against T&T in the 2023 CNL, and dur­ing the pe­ri­od since, they have scored 34 goals while con­ced­ing just nine.

Sul­varan says for­ti­fy­ing their home field has been down to a few fac­tors.

“That sta­di­um is the Black Pan­ther Cave. We call it the Cue­va de Pan­tera Ne­gra. That’s where every­thing changes. The thing is, the field, the sur­face, is ar­ti­fi­cial turf. Your lo­cal teams play on nat­ur­al grass, so I think that’s a lot to our ad­van­tage. We train on it, and I think that gives us a great ad­van­tage in how the ball rolls and how the ball bounces. I think it’s been our ad­van­tage, for sure. The oth­er thing is, I think all those 10 games were to a full house and sold out, and that’s al­so a big dif­fer­ence for the play­ers. Trinidad’s go­ing to have a very hard time beat­ing us. I think if you take one point from us, I think it’s go­ing to be in the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.”

Cu­ra­cao will al­so face the War­riors at an op­por­tune time, as Derek King’s men are still smart­ing from back-to-back loss­es to Haiti and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. The 3-2 and 2-1 re­sults, re­spec­tive­ly, have left the men in red, white, and black fourth in the six-team group with ze­ro points and a goal dif­fer­en­tial of mi­nus 2.

Added to that, they have not won a match, com­pet­i­tive or friend­ly, dat­ing back to Oc­to­ber 10, 2025, a 3-0 World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing (WCQ) win over Bermu­da, which al­so hap­pens to be their on­ly win out of their last 18 match­es of any clas­si­fi­ca­tion on for­eign soil, along with 12 loss­es (7 friend­ly, 2 Gold Cup, 2 WCQ and 1 CNL) and five draws (2 friend­ly, 2 Gold Cup and 1 WCQ).

But Sul­varan says those sta­tis­tics be­lie Cu­ra­cao’s true as­sess­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go task be­fore them.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways giv­en us a headache. For the World Cup qual­i­fiers, we came out with­out a loss but with­out a win ei­ther. Those were two equal re­sults. And we feel like tak­ing six points from Trinidad and To­ba­go is not prob­a­ble, and I don’t think that with that team T&T will fin­ish with no points. So we hope to get at least four points with a win here and maybe a draw in Port-of-Spain, then hope that Haiti will beat the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic so that we can get through with at least ten points.”