The Jamaica Star :: Sport :: Uphill task for Reggae Boyz

It is becoming increas-ingly clear that Jamaica's Reggae Boyz face an uphill task to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Since his recent return to direct the island's football, technical director Rene Simoes has been working very hard to get a squad together. He has travelled to both the United Kingdom and United States to watch Jamaican footballers in action and has invited home a few players on trial.

The current squad has drawn twice with Trinidad and Tobago, 2-2 at home and 1-1 away. Between those two matches they defeated St. Vincent 5-1 in another friendly at the National Stadium.

Then came yesterday's 2-1 shocker to lowly Grenada in that country's capital.

Lack of chemistry

While it is difficult to accurately assess the team's performance in that match without seeing them in action the result does show that the squad needs a lot more time to develop the chemistry achieved during the run-up to the country's qualification for France in 1998.

Grenada has a few players playing professionally abroad but a Jamaican team, now in the final stages of preparation for the World Cup qualifiers, should not be losing to another Caribbean country ranked 143rd in the world.

Forget quality teams

Only this week, a Gleaner report quoted Jamaica Football Federation president Horace Burrell, bemoaning the fact that the Boyz were unable to get quality warm-up matches in the run-up to the World Cup qualifiers. With yesterday's result, he can now forget about approaching any of the top teams. Who will want to face a team which was beaten by Grenada?

While a player, if he is good enough, should be selected, regardless of age I think the fact that Simoes was forced to recall several players, who were involved in the France 1998 campaign, shows the problem he faces.

Aged team

During the 1998 campaign, most of the top players - Theodore Whitmore, Onandi Lowe, Deon Burton, Paul Hall, Andy Williams, Ian Goodison and Warren Barrett, to name just a few, were in their early to mid-20s and developing rapidly and hungry for success. The team now has a number of players in the twilight of their careers and will find it difficult to go through the rigours of a very tough CONCACAF qualifying series.

In addition, some of these players have already comp-leted a very long season in England and should be resting now to face next season.

Free ride to semis?

Jamaica's next two matches, the opening qualifiers against Bahamas, next Sunday and Wednesday, should result in easy wins for the Reggae Boyz. The real test will come from the semi-final group which should include regional giants Mexico, Canada, Honduras and Jamaica.

It is at this point that the lack of quality warm-up matches will really hurt the team. Mexico recently played matches against world number one Argentina and Peru. They lost 4-1 to Argentina and whipped Peru 4-0. Honduras drew 1-1 with Venezuela, while Canada drew 2-2 with Panama and were beaten 3-2 by Brazil.

The above shows that Jamaica's expected rivals have all been playing against teams ranked far higher than Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent and Grenada.

It will be difficult to make adjustments when the real competition starts. It may mean that the players could be half-way through the semi-final round before the technical director would be able to choose a settled team. By then, it may be too late.