The casual USMNT fan might have raised an eyebrow when seeing that Curacao was the opponent in the Gold Cup quarterfinals, but this is a name we should all get used to seeing.
Since gaining it’s freedom from the dissolved Netherlands Antilles in 2010, the Curacao soccer team has been steadily improving. They reached a new peak in 2017 when they won the Caribbean Cup for the first time. That year they also played in their first Gold Cup since 1973. In 2018 they improved again, making the single biggest rise in the rankings of any Caribbean country, and now rank 5th amongst those 31 teams according to eloratings.