Joshua Brenet: Curaçao's Journey to the World Cup
The road from Curaçao to the World Cup runs, improbably, through Hoffenheim’s reserves, a Qatari detour and a courtroom in the Netherlands. At the end of it stands Joshua Brenet, 32 years old, starting right-back for a nation that has only one player actually born on the island in its 26-man squad.
Curaçao is still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and its football reflects that bond more clearly than any constitutional document. Generations of Curaçaoans have settled in Dutch cities, and their children now form the spine of a national team FIFA has only recognised since 2010. Of this World Cup group, only Tahith Chong first saw daylight on the island itself – and he happens to be its most recognisable face.
Chong’s own path has been winding enough. The winger broke through at Manchester United, collecting 16 competitive appearances before a short, stuttering loan at Werder Bremen in 2021. He now wears the colours of Sheffield United and is one of six Curaçao internationals with a German chapter on their CV.
Gervane Kastaneer spent time at 1. FC Kaiserslautern, Riechedly Bazoer at VfL Wolfsburg, Roshon van Eijma at Preußen Münster, while Jürgen Locadia and Brenet both passed through TSG Hoffenheim. For Brenet, that stop would define his reputation as much as any medal or cap.
From Eredivisie champion to costly gamble
When Hoffenheim paid €3.5 million to prise Brenet from PSV Eindhoven in 2018, they were buying a proven winner. He had three Eredivisie titles and two senior Netherlands caps. Julian Nagelsmann, then the rising star of German coaching and now in charge of Germany, pushed the deal. On paper, it made sense: an athletic, attacking full-back for a team heading into the Champions League.
Reality hit hard.
Brenet watched the first Bundesliga matches of his new adventure from the bench. Then came the moment that would poison his standing. Ahead of Hoffenheim’s first-ever Champions League game, against Shakhtar Donetsk, he skipped a video session. Nagelsmann’s response was ruthless. Brenet was dropped from the squad.
He did return, but only on the fringes. Cameos, not trust. The following season, Alfred Schreuder – now Nagelsmann’s assistant with the DFB – ignored him entirely. Under Sebastian Hoeneß, the slide continued: down to the reserves, into the fourth-tier Regionalliga Südwest, a high-profile signing reduced to anonymity.
The stories off the pitch matched the decline on it. Repeated disciplinary problems, chronic lateness, a reputation that scared off potential buyers. Hoffenheim eventually cut their losses when Brenet walked away for free to Twente Enschede in 2022.
Revival, relapse, and a judge’s verdict
In Enschede, the football came back. Brenet impressed again, his form hinting at the player Nagelsmann once believed in. Yet his worst opponent was not a left-winger. It was his own decision-making.
In January 2023, Dutch police stopped him twice in two weeks for driving without a licence. He had already lost that licence in 2020 after a drink-driving offence. The pattern was impossible to ignore.
“He clearly has no regard for authority. It seems to me as though he is continuing to play football after receiving a red card,” the presiding judge said, before handing down a one-month prison sentence in 2024. It was not his first brush with the courts. Three years earlier, he had received a suspended sentence with a fine and community service for domestic violence.
On appeal, the jail term for driving without a licence was converted to community service. The damage at club level, though, was done. Twente terminated his contract.
A restless tour: Qatar, Scotland, Turkey
Brenet’s career lurched on. He joined Al-Rayyan in Qatar, but featured only six times in the 2024/25 campaign. From there came a short spell at Livingston FC in Scotland, then a move to Kayserispor in Turkey for the second half of the same season.
These were not the destinations imagined for a former Dutch international and Eredivisie champion. Yet they kept him in the game, kept him fit, and – crucially – kept open the door to the country of his parents.
Despite his history with Oranje’s youth teams and a senior debut in the 2016 World Cup qualifiers, FIFA granted Brenet a change of allegiance to Curaçao. The switch, on paper a formality, carried weight. It turned a drifting club career into a central role in a national project.
Since his debut for Curaçao in 2024, Brenet has scored six goals in 17 appearances. He started at right-back and scored again in the final warm-up match against Aruba. The position that once brought him to Nagelsmann’s attention now gives him a second international life.
Facing the past in World Cup lights
On Sunday at 7 pm, the circle tightens. Curaçao open their World Cup campaign against Germany. On the opposite bench: Nagelsmann and Schreuder, the coaches who once sanctioned his signing, then his exile.
Across the pitch, another thread: Chong, the island’s lone home-born player in the squad, emblem of a diaspora team carrying the flag of a small Caribbean nation into football’s biggest tournament.
For Brenet, it is more than a group-stage fixture. It is a meeting with former mentors, with old judgments, with a version of himself that never quite settled in Germany.
Curaçao arrive as underdogs, as they almost always do. But they also arrive with a right-back who has burned through chances, crossed lines, and somehow still forced his way back to the world stage.
How many more times can he rewrite his story? The next chapter starts against the country that knows both his potential and his flaws better than most.
