A Bucket List Inspired By Football
· Free Press Journal
Let’s be honest about your “Places to Visit Before I Die” note. It’s 90 percent Iceland, Zanzibar and Santorini, it hasn’t been updated since 2019, and somewhere between tea and dinner last Tuesday you added Curaçao, Cape Verde, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Haiti because a YouTuber with perfect hair called them “underrated gems” of the World Cup. You still don’t know where two of them are on a map. But now, with the FIFA World Cup 2026 kicking off across the US, Mexico, and Canada, you have the perfect excuse: all four are playing. Yes. All four. Your group chat is going to lose its mind.
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Start with Curaçao, because it’s the easiest to love and the hardest to explain. It’s a tiny Dutch island 40 miles off Venezuela, which means you get Caribbean beaches with European bureaucracy and a national sense of humor about it. You land, step into the heat, and Willemstad hits you like a Pinterest board someone dropped in the ocean. The houses are yellow, pink, blue, orange, and it’s technically illegal to feel stressed here. The flamingos enforce it.
Now imagine that same island shutting down because “La Seleccion di Kòrsou” just made the World Cup. The beaches will still have no seaweed and $10 sunbeds, but every bar will have a TV duct-taped to a palm tree. The drink called Blue Curaçao was invented here, and no, it does not taste like the sea. It tastes like a melted popsicle made by adults who were tired of being responsible. You’ll drink it, regret it, and order another while chanting for a team that’s 444,000 people strong and somehow outran giants in qualifying. Everything still closes by 6pm, except during matches. On match days, the whole island pulls an all-nighter and judges you if you don’t.
From there, fly across the Atlantic to Cape Verde, which is Portugal’s group chat with Africa and the wind is the admin. Ten islands, 350 miles off Senegal, and nine of them exist purely to prove that hair products are a lie. Sal Island is white sand, salt flats, and kitesurfers who look like they were cast in a Red Bull ad. If you don’t like wind, Sal will break up with you before your first coffee. São Vicente is where the music lives, home of Cesária Évora, the barefoot diva who sang about longing. After a plate of cachupa, you’ll understand why.
Cape Verde’s “Blue Sharks” in a World Cup? The entire country will be awake at 3 a.m. IST, radios on, goat stew simmering, and half the island screaming from fishing boats. You will spend four hours on a ferry to spend four hours on another island that looks 93 percent identical to the last one, except now everyone’s wearing blue and arguing about VAR. It’s Africa on training wheels, with cappuccinos, Wi-Fi, and a football team that made the world stop and Google “where is Cape Verde.” The wind will still ruin your hair. It will also ruin your voice from shouting.
Then there’s Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country with a comma in its name and a complicated relationship with history. It sits in the Balkans like a triangle that lost a fight with Croatia, and it feels like nowhere else in Europe. You expect ruins and heaviness. You get Ottoman bazaars, Austro-Hungarian buildings, mountains that make Switzerland nervous, and coffee so strong it should come with a warning label. Sarajevo is a city where a mosque, a church, and a synagogue all share the same block and the same bakery. That bakery makes burek, and you will eat three of them before you remember you’re full.
Football here is religion, rivalry, and therapy. The “Zmajevi” — the Dragons — are back in the World Cup, and every café TV will be at full volume while grandmas shout tactical advice and uncles relitigate 1994. In Mostar you’ll cross the Stari Most bridge, take 200 photos, and watch teenagers dive into the Neretva River for tips. You’ll consider it. Don’t. The water is 8°C and your insurance does not cover “I thought I was brave.” The people will feed you, tell you their life story in 20 minutes, and ask who you’re backing. Bosnia doesn’t do small talk. It does big talk, with meat, goals, and passion.
And finally Haiti, the country your newsfeed keeps getting wrong. It shares an island with the Dominican Republic, and if DR is the polished sibling with the resort bracelet, Haiti is the brilliant, misunderstood one who writes poetry at 2 a.m. You’ve heard three words about Haiti before you land: earthquake, poverty, danger. You’ll leave knowing 300 others: art, music, revolution, food, and a resilience that makes your “bad Wi-Fi day” feel embarrassing. Port-au-Prince is loud, colorful, chaotic, and full of life. The art market at Grand Rue will sell you paintings that belong in a museum for $50. Buy two.
Haiti’s “Les Grenadiers” in 2026? The whole country will stop. Football is hope with cleats here. Kids play with anything round on beaches that look like your laptop screensaver. The food is French technique, African soul, and Caribbean spice. Griot, diri ak pwa, fried chicken that will ruin all other fried chicken for you. Haiti doesn’t need your pity. It deserves travelers. If your idea of vacation is all-inclusive and no surprises, stay in the resort lane. If your idea is to have your worldview slapped awake over plantains while the street argues about Messi vs Mbappé, buy the ticket.
What ties these 4 together? None of them are trying to be the next Brazil at the Cup. Curaçao won’t do yoga retreats. Cape Verde won’t do influencers. Bosnia won’t do brunch. Haiti won’t do your savior complex. But in 2026, they’ll all be on the same pitch, and you can say you visited them before they became “everyone’s second team.”
Your Instagram will not look like Santorini. Your stories won’t get a million views. You’ll come home with questions, flavor in your mouth, someone’s phone number, and the weird feeling that the best World Cups aren’t about the trophy. They’re about the people yelling next to you.
So keep Santorini on your list. But make room for the 4 countries you can’t pronounce on the first try. Pack patience. For Bosnia, bring an appetite and a football opinion. For Haiti, bring respect and a spare jersey. For Cape Verde, bring a hat. For Curaçao, bring a swimsuit and your ability to do nothing.
They’re waiting. No rush. In Curaçao, it’s siesta anyway. And when the 2026 final kicks off, you’ll be watching it from somewhere that feels like football again.
Dr. Sandeep Goyal is Chairman of ad agency Rediffusion. He has travelled to over 100 countries.