BY PAUL-ANDRE WALKER
Staff Reporter
CONTRIBUTED - Venicia Reid
CONTRIBUTED - Vin Blaine
JAMAICA'S UNDER-20 women footballers are expected home this evening after their brave effort to qualify for the World Championships ended in a 4-1 loss to hosts Mexico in yesterday's CONCACAF third-place playoff.
After conceding an own-goal, Jamaica fought back to level the score heading into half-time but were worn down by the Mexicans in the second half.
Coach Vin Blaine said although the girls failed to make it to the World Cup, he was proud of their performance but believe they could have done better.
"We didn't execute," he said. "We got two very clear-cut chances on goal, one-on-one with the goalkeeper and we didn't convert," said Blaine.
DEFENSIVE ERRORS
Blaine alluded to those chances in the first 10 minutes of play as coming back to haunt his team after they let in what he considered a soft goal against the run of play.
"At that point we had the better of play and then gave up a soft goal," explained Blaine.
Against the run of play or not, 14-year-old Veronica Charlyn Corral, with eight goals in the competition turned out to be Mexico's hero, getting onto the scoresheet twice to deal Jamaica two deadly blows.
Blaine says, though, that until the Jamaicans made defensive errors they were the better team.
Venicia Reid, who was the Jamaican on the scoresheet was also the unfortunate striker that misplaced her shooting boots in those one-on-one situations but even her performance, Blaine alluded to with favour.
"She normally scores those but I think she panicked a little," he said.
In the end, Jamaica's Girls did better than was expected and Blaine says building on what has been achieved should be the aim.
"I am disappointed but when you look at our team and playing teams that are 40 million people strong and all the resources to boot I think we did pretty well. I don't think we should hang our heads.
"If you look at our preparation and what we had to do you will agree. All the other teams played international practice games and we were the only Caribbean team. All the other teams have agreed that we have done very very well," said Blaine.
In the battle for top place the United States unseated Canada as CONCACAF champions after a close 3-2 victory.
Do
you have a problem? Is something bothering
you? Write to 