5 days ago
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Jamaica’s failure to secure automatic qualification to the 2026 World Cup should mark a turning point in its football.
It should define the end of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) experiment to favour selection to the senior men’s national football team – the Reggae Boyz – with players from overseas who qualify to play for the country through lineage, ahead of those who were born, bred and developed their talent on these shores.
The vast majority of players who have enjoyed unequal opportunities at Reggae Boyz selection are, and have been, attached to professional clubs based in England.
The experiment began prior to Jamaica’s historic qualification to the World Cup Finals in France in 1998.
It has been a colossal failure. And the faith divested in that strategy remains unproven.
Seven World Cup cycles have passed since then: 1998-2002, 2002-2006, 2006-2010, 2010-2014, 2014-2018, and 2018-2022.
None has borne success.
Yet, there’s still a chance to qualify through FIFA’s intercontinental play-offs next March, with a knockout match against New Caledonia, followed by the winner facing DR Congo for a World Cup spot.
Jamaica’s inability to gain automatic qualification for this 2022-2026 World Cup cycle is the worst.
It is the worst because it was the easiest.
Next year’s World Cup will consist of 48 teams, an increase of 16 countries from the 2022 tournament.
Never before has the World Cup catered to 48 countries. With Concacaf countries United States, Canada and Mexico hosting the tournament, the region was guaranteed six automatic spots at the World Cup, with three going to the hosts.
The World Cup draw placed Jamaica in an all-Caribbean play-off group with lowly teams Curaçao, Trinidad and Tobago and Bermuda, respectively ranked by FIFA at 89th, 100th and 168th.
Never before had Jamaica been so lucky to draw such inferior competition in a World Cup play-off.
WATERSHED MOMENT
For the Reggae Boyz’s watershed moment in 1998, practically all the players in the team were born, bred and developed their talent in this country.
There were even Jamaicans who sacrificed professional contractual obligations overseas to join the national programme, players like Altimont Butler, Paul ‘One-a-Day’ Young, so nicknamed for his regular goal contribution, and Walter Boyd, the leading goalscorer for Jamaica’s 1998 World Cup qualifying campaign.
That squad also included the United Kingdom-born and bred trio – Paul Hall, goal-getter Deon Burton, and Fitzroy Simpson – who showed commitment by paying their fares to come to Jamaica and try out for the team, contributing over the last half of the qualifying campaign.
The Reggae Boyz endured some tough moments in that series.
There was a famous fight in Mexico with the club team Toros Neza.
The Jamaica team bus was stoned, again in Mexico, after losing 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier at The Azteca. For that World Cup qualifier, the players, coaching staff and management were detained in buses at The Azteca Stadium by the hostile crowd for more than two hours.
Then, the Reggae Boyz were given a cow pasture loaded with dunk on which to train in Honduras, and got involved in a midnight fight later that evening with natives intent on depriving them of sleep ahead of the Concacaf World Cup qualifying match the next evening.
PLAYERS OMITTED
After all of that, several locally based players were left out of the final squad for the World Cup Finals in France, at the expense of English-based players who were approached to play during qualifiers but refused.
Locals Young, Butler and Chris Ziadie were excluded for speaking up about the inclusion, as “unfair”, of the British professionals selected for the World Cup who had never kicked a ball in qualifying.
In that lot were Robbie Earle, Daryll Powell, Frank Sinclair and Marcus Gayle.
The matter of commitment has, 28 years later, again come into focus with the JFF still indicating an interest in Mason Greenwood, the former Manchester United striker who qualifies for Jamaica because of lineage.
Ironically, the call comes from English-based players in the Jamaica team who qualified by virtue of lineage, Isaac Hayden and Amari’i Bell, who says his inclusion for the World Cup would be “unfair”, noting he had ample opportunities to have committed earlier.
The shoe is on the other foot. But there is no denying, their point is valid.
Those players, like others in the setup, had pledged their allegiance earlier and backed it up with contributions on the playing field.
“I’ve only played for Jamaica for a year, and there was some resistance to me when I started. But I have played 12 games, and everyone can see my passion and the way I play the game,” Hayden said. “I give everything on the pitch, and I wanted to be there to help Jamaica progress to the World Cup.”
He added, “[The JFF] are obsessed with names and trying to recruit more players. They want to have the best team on the pitch, but I said it to the JFF, ‘If a player is not willing to commit for the last round of qualifying, unless they’re injured, I do not see why they should be joining the group in March or at the end of the season if we qualify’.”
Hayden is right.
However, the JFF’s obsession appears to be more than just players, but with players in the United Kingdom’s professional system, and remnants from a colonial system which has induced the belief that foreign is better.
The penchant for selecting English-based players of unproven worth ahead of locals was greater during the last half of this World Cup cycle, especially under previous coach Steve McClaren, who just loaded new players into the Reggae Boyz setup at every turn.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost, unearthing issues of player unity and commitment, while there remains no cut-off for selection.
This adds to the question of leadership in the team, even as the vice-captain, Damion Lowe, an aggressive, hard-nosed player who is not deficient in talent compared to others being selected ahead of him, has been sitting on the bench.
BEST AVAILABLE TALENT
There is great danger in the denial of optimum opportunities for born-and-bred Jamaicans not being part of a process that selects the best possible teams to represent the country.
In 1998 when the Reggae Boyz qualified for France, that year to 2001 represented the most successful period in Jamaica’s football, when three men’s football teams – led by the senior Reggae Boyz - qualified for senior and age group (U17 and U20) World Cups.
Players like Ricardo ‘Bibi’ Gardner went from schoolboy selection at Wolmer’s Boys to captaining Bolton Wanderers in the English Premier League. Ian ‘Pepe’ Goodison rose from Kingston’s Major League to British football. Many other players at both junior and senior levels got professional breaks, like Keith Kelly, another Wolmerian, who got picked from the Youth World Cup by France powerhouse Paris St Germain, and Sean Fraser, who went on to play with success in Brazil, joining the legendary, the late Allan ‘Skill’ Cole as Jamaicans to play in the football-mad country.
Those World Cup squads consisted of nearly 100 per cent players born, bred and developed in Jamaica.
Real football quality exists in this country.
FINANCIAL BENEFITS
Football is a lucrative sport, with chances aplenty for the very talented. Local clubs spend millions developing talent each season – around $40m for a Premier League outfit – with very little chance to recoup that spend.
International markets, with the sale and transfer of players, are the main route through which local clubs could benefit.
That gap needs to be plugged. But only a willingness to enhance player, club and national development by affording equal opportunities at the national level will enhance that cause.
McClaren is gone. But he was the latest coaching conduit for that magnanimous failure of British player recruitment for World Cup qualification. The English coach had a 44-player World Cup ‘watchlist’, the breakdown showing 22 UK-born players, 19 Jamaican-born, two born in the United States and one born in the Netherlands.
Opportunities for national selection should be far greater for locals. This is Jamaica, a country of people strong-willed and talented enough, including football, to fit any unit representative of these shores on the global stage.
The JFF must ensure an equal opportunity in fulfilling its own and the country’s goals and ambitions.
It’s time to end the English experiment.
Audley Boyd has covered international football since 1989. He formerly played in the National Premier League, representing Cavalier and Arnett Gardens football clubs.
English (US) ·