Head coach of Jamaica’s Under-17 football team Merron Gordon has rued his team’s lack of proficiency in front of goal which resulted in a 1-2 loss to Guadeloupe in their second match at the CONCACAF Under-17 Championship inside the Estadio Mateo Flores Stadium in Guatemala on Tuesday.
Jamaica took the lead through a rasping strike from Ronaldo Barrett in the 41st minute, but gave up two late goals after Nashon Bolt-Barrett was ejected in the 52nd minute for two yellow card cautions.
The French-speaking Caribbean team then pulled level through William Jacques in the 76th minute, before stealing the three points in the 89th minute through Ylan Moloza.
The Jamaicans remain in second place in the four-team group on three points after a 4-2 victory over Cuba in their opening round game. In Tuesday’s second Group G game, Costa Rica blanked Cuba 4-0 to consolidate their lead with six points. They had defeated Guadeloupe 2-1 in the opening game.
“It was a tough one. We started the game tentatively. I thought we could have won the game from first half, we got some easy chances, and we didn’t capitalise, and we got some half chances that we could have turned into full chances,” bemoaned Merron Gordon at game’s end.
He continued: “But such is the game… that second yellow card to Bolt, though, in the second half, it was horrible for us. It was a tough call by the referee for a second yellow there because the linesman (assistant referee) was calling him (referee) to tell him that the next player (opponent) was tugging him (Barrett), but he just ran over with his yellow card.”
The head coach, who has Andrew Peart and Vassel Reynolds as his assistants, and veteran Wendell Downswell as the technical director, conceded that the expulsion of Bolt set his team back in the game.
“It put us in the back foot from there; we had some players who played long minutes in the first game and their legs were going and we made some changes, but these players (substitutes) didn’t come and impact the game as we wanted to, but they are young boys and we have to just move on strongly from here,” Gordon said.
The Jamaicans will now face group leaders Costa Rica on Thursday, with Guadeloupe facing the winless Cuba.
At the end of the group stage play, the top three teams from each group advance to the knockout round, joining the four group winners of the 2022 Concacaf qualifiers, Bermuda, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.
The knockout rounds will be played on Saturday and Sunday, followed by the quarterfinals on February 21 and 22, the semi-finals on February 24 and the final slated for two days later.
The four semi-finalists earn qualification to the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Peru later this year.
