Substitute Kalyssa van Zanten struck in the first half of overtime to give the Reggae Girlz a 1-0 win over Costa Rica in the CONCACAF Women’s Championship third-place playoff on Monday.
Played as the curtain-raiser ahead of the final inside Estadio BBVA Bancomer, van Zanten notched the all-important goal shortly after entering the field as a substitute in the 102nd minute and it proved enough at the end.
As a result of finishing third, Jamaica will enter a home and away playoff with Canada, the runners-up who lost 0-1 to the USA in the championship game.
The winner of the playoff will qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Alex Morgan scored the winner from the penalty spot in the 78th minute.
And by virtue of finishing second in the preliminary group stage, Jamaica gained automatic qualification to the FIFA World Cup finals, an achievement which pleased head coach Lorne Donaldson.
“We know it was going to be a very tight game. Every time we play against Costa Rica it comes down to the second half or overtime, so we figured if we can get some speed on the field late when they are tiring we can get something and “Kiki” (Kalyssa van Zanten) went in and had a good finish and scored a good goal,” he told the media in a post-game interview.
He added: “We have to thank Jamaica and thank President Ricketts (Michael) for bringing me in late, and Cedella Marley and all the people in Jamaica who backed this thing and we have a far way to go.
I’ll sit back and watch US and Canada and see if we can get to that level.”
The coach further stated that it was good for the country considering that the team only had about two weeks of preparation and was still able to achieve what it had.
He didn’t think he or his technical staff did anything special to get the win.
“I don’t know that we did anything special, we know Costa Rica very well. They were trying to exploit where we were weak and we tried to exploit them where they were weak. We think we could get them on that side of the field and that’s what happened on that side of the field where we thought we could get a goal from and it just happened that way, so sometimes whether it’s lucky, that’s just football.”
It was a very competitive game with either side sharing possession of the ball evenly. And after neither team was able to stake a claim until near the end of the first half of extra time, the Reggae Girlz went ahead after Chinyelu Asher played a pass to Drew Spencer, whose exquisite defence-splitting pass to right-winger van Zanten ended with the wide player slotting past goalkeeper Daniele Solera.
