Before Gilbert Martina took the job as president of Curaçao’s soccer federation in 2023, he asked his wife for her opinion. “She said, ‘Hell, no, you’re not going to do that,’” Martina said. At the time, Martina already had one demanding job as the chief executive of a medical center on the Caribbean island. The soccer job would be no less tricky. Curaçao, a nation of 156,000 located 40 miles off Venezuela, had never qualified its national team, the Blue Wave, for the World Cup. Martina was