A king with 3 teams

The Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, is in luck this World Cup: He has not one, not two, but three countries to root for,.

For the first time, the Dutch are not the only country from what is today the Kingdom of the Netherlands to qualify for football’s biggest tournament. Curaçao’s squad will represent its population of 158,000 in North America, having qualified late last year.

The island, situated just north of Venezuela, is a former Dutch colony and once served as a major trade hub for the Dutch West India Company. In the mid 1800s, it was one of six Caribbean islands placed under joint colonial administration based in the country’s capital Willemstad. In 1954, the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands was signed and the islands formally became known as the “Netherlands Antilles.”

That arrangement was dissolved and by 2010, Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten were all autonomous constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Sun-drenched Curaçao wasted little time establishing itself on the international football scene. It appeared on FIFA’s member list in March 2011, inheriting the Netherlands Antilles’ FIFA membership, records and ranking. Curaçao will play its first-ever World Cup match today, against Germany in Houston.

King Willem-Alexander remains Curaçao’s head of state, while the country has its own government and handles most internal affairs itself, including education, health care, and tourism. The Kingdom of the Netherlands retains overarching responsibility for foreign relations and defense.

Now, as if Willem-Alexander didn’t have his hands full enough, he will likely also be, at least ostensibly, showing support for Argentina to keep the peace within the royal household. In 2002, he married Máxima Zorreguieta, who is Argentine by birth, after the pair met in Seville in southern Spain.

With three half-Argentine and bilingual daughters, the royal family have plenty of reasons to keep an eye on La Albiceleste. The Netherlands and Argentina have played some of the most iconic games in World Cup history: a tense 1978 final, won by Argentina, in front of military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, in Buenos Aires; a sweltering Marseille quarterfinal in 1998; and a very bad-tempered scrap at the same stage at Qatar 2022.

A spokesperson for the Dutch royal family told POLITICO that, “King Willem-Alexander, Queen Máxima and Princess Ariane will be traveling to Houston and Kansas to cheer on the football teams of the Netherlands and Curaçao when they play against respectively Sweden and Ecuador.”

Time will tell if the Dutch monarch will be raising a glass of Heineken, Curaçao liqueur or Malbec this summer.