KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands began Saturday by cheering the Dutch past Sweden in Houston.<\/p>\n
The monarchs ended the day by watching Curacao play Ecuador in Kansas City.<\/p>\n
The small island nation of Curacao is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and that makes King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima the heads of state. So, after a quick flight north Saturday, the royal couple dutifully swapped out their bright orange scarves of Het Oranje Legioen they wore to their earlier match with bright blue ones for The Blue Wave.<\/p>\n
Curacao, the smallest World Cup team in population and size, made its tournament debut last Sunday in a 7-1 loss to Germany.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an extra-special World Cup because we have both the Netherlands and Curacao,\u201d Willem-Alexander told RTL-TV. \u201cSo we have twice as many teams to cheer for. A great opportunity to cheer on both the Blues and the Oranges. All in all, it will be a special World Cup for me with two teams, and I naturally hope they go extremely far.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Netherlands moved one step closer to the knockout round after a 5-1 win over Sweden.
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Brian Brobbey and Cody Gakpo scored two goals apiece to help coach Ronald Koeman\u2019s team bounce back from a disappointing draw in its opener and move atop Group F. The Netherlands concludes group play against Tunisia on Thursday in Kansas City.<\/p>\n
It is quite rare for sitting monarchs to come through the area. Queen Ann of Romania attended the dedication of the Liberty Memorial, which is where Kansas City is holding its World Cup FanFest, in the 1920s, while King Gustav XVI of Sweden made a stop in the small Kansas town of Lindsborg when he was passing through the Midwest in the 1970s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands began Saturday by cheering the Dutch past Sweden in Houston. The monarchs ended the day by watching Curacao play Ecuador in Kansas City. The small island nation of Curacao is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and that makes … Continue reading Dutch royals swap orange for blue as they cheer for the Netherlands, then Cura\u00e7ao at the World Cup<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-22 20:16:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516937,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516935\/revisions\/1516937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}