Jamaica Reggae Boyz will close out yet another failed World Cup Qualifying campaign Wednesday when they host Honduras inside Kingston’s National Stadium at 8:05 pm.
In a game of academic interest only, as it pits together the two bottom teams in seventh and eighth places, respectively, Jamaica will look to close out in style, having swept to a 2-0 away win for their only three-point victory in the 13 previous games in the eight-nation CONCACAF Final Round Play-off.
Canada secured qualification on Sunday when they blanked Jamaica 4-0 inside a frigid BMO Field in Toronto. The North Americans became the first team from CONCACAF to book their ticket to Qatar and it was their first trip to the global showpiece event in 36 years.
And as much as they proved the best team in the final round, they have Covid-19 and the machinations of the powers that be in CONCACAF for their rich rewards.
Indeed, Canada found themselves outside the top six teams from CONCACAF at the cut-off point for the final round, but inexplicably, the final round of six was increased to a final round of eight, despite faced with a reduced timetable due to the pandemic.
In other games today, all starting at the same time, Panama play host to Canada, US visit Costa Rica and Mexico host El Salvador.
Canada lead the table with 28 points, with the US and Mexico next on 25, followed by Costa Rica on 22, Panama on 17, El Salvador on 10, Jamaica with eight and Honduras on four.
The top three teams advance directly to Qatar, while the team finishing in fourth place earn the right to a play-off with a team from Oceania for another chance at making it to Qatar.
The Reggae Boyz’s interim head coach Paul Hall was forced to juggle his starting side on Sunday as a number of the senior players did not make the trip to Canada, so he is expected to parade a stronger group this time around.
Nonetheless, he wants to maintain the delicate balance of trying to win the game while at the same time keeping an eye on the future and the resources at his disposal.
“I said to the players at the start of the Canadian game, we are on our own journey and Honduras are on their own journey and I think what we need to do is take a long look at ourselves and see where we are in the whole picture and where we want to go to. We’ve got to have a strategy where we can end up doing well in these Nations Leagues, these Gold Cups and arriving at World Cups consistently.
“Yes, we would like to win every game that we play, so Honduras is another game that we want to win tomorrow (Wednesday), so it’s part of the story, yes, but it is more about getting the story right, getting the foundations right and making sure that we can springboard forward and have a strong unit of people and a consistent unit of people with a plan in place,” Hall said at Tuesday’s pregame press conference.
He added: “We need to plan our way forward now and those steps are going to be really key and to how we do it.”
For Wednesday’s game, Jamaica will welcome back Leon Bailey, Damion Lowe, Andre Gray and Dillon Barnes to the squad, the first three of whom were starters against El Salvador last week Thursday when the teams drew 1-1. In fact, Gray was the player who rescued a point for Jamaica then.
As part of the long term plan and often times in a short window, Hall also stressed the importance of building team bonding.
“We haven’t been able to connect with the public and we haven’t been able to connect with each other very well, so we went to a restaurant last night (Monday night), Andre Blake’s restaurant, for morale, for togetherness, to be connected and it’s those types of things that I feel that we need to reintroduce back in here and a win probably would help with the morale, but that’s not the total story,” he said.
“We will go out and try to win that game tomorrow (Wednesday), no question about that. However, morale comes in different ways and forms and visiting a restaurant as a team, as a connected group was really important for the morale and the togetherness, so yes it’s important that we try and get three points tomorrow just to prove that we are good enough.”
The Reggae Boyz squad will be selected from Andre Blake, Dillon Barnes, Amal Knight, Jamoi Topey, Gregory Leigh, Demar Rose, Tarrick Ximines, Richard King, Leon Bailey, Ricardo Thomas, Alex Marshall, Ravel Morrison, Lemar Walker, Nicholas Nelson, Andre Gray, Christopher Pearson, Damion Lowe, Daniel Green, Atapharoy Bygrave, Adrian Mariappa, Ramone Howell, Dwayne Atkinson, Devon Williams.
