Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz will look to close out the CONCACAF Women’s Championship Group C qualifiers with a bang when they host the Dominican Republic at the famed Sabina Park on Tuesday evening.
Jamaica lead the group on maximum nine points, the same as Dominican Republic, but with a superior goal difference (18 to 14), which leaves the Reggae Girlz with a simple task of avoiding defeat to advance to the final round slated for Mexico in July.
For head coach Vinimore Blaine, the task is uncomplicated.
“The girls are focused and ready,” he said during a presser on Monday.
And he has no doubts about his and the team’s mentality going into this game. For him, it’s no different to that of the last game when they trounced Cayman Islands 9-0.
“Just about the same without revealing much,” he continued. “I don’t see any changes and if so nothing much. Dom Rep has to concentrate on our top five attackers, [and] they have never faced any players like those since they have been playing, so it’s an advantage for us.
“We now have to show up and ensure that defensively we stay compact and we stay disciplined. In the Cayman game we sort of got complacent because we were winning by so many goals, that can’t happen against Dom Rep, we have to ensure that for the entire game we stay compact, we play right, we attack the way we used to attack and I think we should come out ahead.”
He said it was just a matter of the Girlz going out there with the same ruthlessness and trying to get some goals early. “The idea for me is to go into the game and try and get an early goal.”
He clearly wouldn’t subject his players to a defensive posture, especially when they are the superior team.
“I know our team is a superior team to Dom Rep, they play well, but player to player we are a better team, so for me to sit back with Dom Rep to get a draw I think it would be inviting them to score. I think they will have to worry about our attack and stay back a little. I want them to open up, so I’m not going to sit back and invite them in.”
In Jamaica’s three previous games they defeated Bermuda 4-0, Grenada 6-1 and the huge victory over Cayman Islands.
The Dominican Republic, on the other hand, held sway as regards goal difference for the first two rounds after beating Granada 9-0, Cayman Islands 4-0 and a 1-0 victory over Bermuda.
The team with the better result from Tuesday’s game will secure qualification to the final phase where all six group winners will join the US and Canada, the two-seeded teams from the region who received byes to the final phase.
In the other game today in Group C, Bermuda and Grenada lock horns.
