Jamaican football must build on recent success to emulate the stars of 1998 and beyond.
Even though The Reggae Boys came into the Gold Cup as the fifth highest FIFA ranked team of the 12 competing. They were still outsiders and surprised everyone with an impressive run to the final.
They topped their group above Costa Rica, El Salvador and host nation Canada. Beat Haiti in the quarter finals, before beating the favourites USA in the semi final to become the first Caribbean nation to make it to a Gold Cup final. Where they unfortunately lost to Mexico 3-1.
In a thrilling final, Jamaica started much the brighter and had a few chances to score before Mexico found their feet and came back into it. Mexico opened the scoring with a fine finish from the star of the tournament Guardado after 32 minutes. Just a minute into the second half, Corona made it 2-0 before a defensive mistake allowed Peralta to score with an instinctive finish on 61 minutes to make it 3-0.
Substitute Darren Mattocks pulled a goal back for Jamaica with a fine finish of his own on 79 minutes.
Mattocks also scored in the semi’s against USA and if I had one criticism of German manager Winfried Schafer, it was Mattocks, who was also the joint top scorer in the Caribbean Cup recently, should have started the final.
Other than that I feel the German manager did a fine job with the Jamaican players at this disposal. It seemed the feat of getting to the final took a lot out of them and a combination of tournament inexperience and tiredness made them run out of steam in the end.
It could have been different had they taken their chances early in the final though. Jamaica’s approach play really impressed me at times. Unfortunately a lack of real quality upfront let them down. The type of quality Mexico showed to take their first two goals in particular.
Nevertheless, Jamaica can be proud of their run but can’t rest on their laurels. They need to use this as a platform and a catalyst to build off and hopefully emulate the stars of 1998 by making it to Russia2018.
That would be an interesting achievement, especially because of where the World Cup is staged and the publicity race relations have been getting there over the years.
Jamaican football is on a mini resurgence. It started with winning their 6th Caribbean cup as the host nation in November 2014, beating Trinidad and Tobago, the most successful nation in the tournament 4-3 on pens.
To me what was even more impressive and really indicated they were on to something was when they competed in the Copa America recently. When I saw they were drawn in a group with Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay I really feared for Jamaica. I thought they were going to take a pounding.
I watched all three games and even though Jamaica lost all three, it was all by a score of 1-0, which made me really sit up and take notice. Defensively they looked solid and organised and they kept the ball better than I expected against the South Americans.
They also made their fair share of chances and gave the likes of Argentina with Messi, Higuain, Di Maria, Zabaleta, Mascherano and co a real scare at times.
As well as Uruguay and Paraguay. It was just that lack of quality upfront that was missing.
But they have gone about building in the right way.
If anyone knows anything about football and building a team, then you would know you really have to start from back to front. I feel Jamaica are doing this.
In the Gold Cup they had 3 clean sheets from six games. In the Caribbean Cup they kept 3 clean sheets from 4 games…..If you aren’t conceding goals you aren’t losing games. Simple.
What Jamaica need to do now is build on this to emulate the stars of 1998 by qualifying for Russia2018. Then hopefully do what Jamaica failed to do in 1998 and build on that success.
I felt because it was the first time Jamaica qualified for the World Cup in 1998. They celebrated a bit to long and forgot to capitalise on that success by riding the wave Jamaican football was on at the time, to take it to the next level.
It was almost like scoring a goal and admiring your strike while the game is still going on, allowing the other team to go down the other end and score.
That success made Jamaica static and they forgot to continue the game. It allowed other nations to catch up. So years later they are back to square one and competing on the same level as certain nations they should really be ahead of now.
Hopefully they have learned from their mistakes and Jamaican football has now caught it’s second wind. It will now be full steam ahead to World Cup 2018 qualification.
The past 8/9 months has given them great experience and confidence. Their squad has an average age of 27, so hopefully they can keep most of it together and try to add a bit more quality moving forward.
Success breads success and no doubt this past year could have opened the eyes of some young budding footballers in Jamaica. Since the success of 1998, youths have defected from football to athletics to try to emulate the likes of Usain Bolt, which is understandable.
This has had a knock on effect in recent years and Jamaica have been bearing the fruits of this with some real talented athletes coming through. Male and female.
Hopefully, with the recent success of Jamaican football and more importantly a push at trying to get to Russia in 2018. These modern-day Reggae Boys can possibly have the same impact on young footballers as Usain Bolt has had on young sprinters in Jamaica.
