Observer EDITORIAL:Let's strengthen the base of Jamaica's fo

[Karl]

Let's strengthen the base of Jamaica's football

Saturday, January 18, 2014

NEWS that three Jamaicans were top 10 picks in the first round of the 2014 Major League Soccer (MLS) SuperDraft brought smiles.

Goalkeeper Mr Andre Blake, from the University of Connecticut, formerly of Clarendon College and Jamaica national age-group teams, was the first pick. He goes to the Philadelphia Union.

Mr Andre Lewis, a midfielder, was the seventh pick, going to the Vancouver Whitecaps, while Mr Damion Lowe, a defender — son of former Reggae Boyz star Mr Onandi Lowe — is the eighth pick, going to the Seattle Sounders.

This continues a steady flow of Jamaican recruits to the MLS, which is rapidly gaining respect and recognition globally. Indeed, from virtually a standing start just a few decades ago, football in the United States and Canada is growing quickly in terms of mass popularity and the corollary media and financial support.

It's a trend that Jamaica's top local clubs are well aware of, having for many years profitably traded top players to their North American counterparts without fuss or fanfare.

This newspaper suspects that increasingly in the future, entrepreneurs in Jamaican football will be looking more to the 'next-door' North American market to place young, talented professionals than the glorified clubs in faraway Britain and the wider Europe.

The nurturing of Jamaican footballers is far from ideal.

Unlike the developed football world where clubs are truly professional organisations with developed youth academies, Jamaica has had to rely mainly on its high schools to guide young footballers. The same is true of other sports.

It is what exists and will have to do for the foreseeable future.

A big problem from our vantage point is that too many of those talented young players are falling by the wayside after leaving school. A few such as Messrs Blake, Lewis and Lowe meet the requisite academic standards and get scholarships to universities, a few are identified by talent scouts and join overseas clubs and some get on to the rosters of the top semi-pro Jamaican clubs.

Many others end up playing for under-resourced, disorganised, little-known community clubs in obscure leagues. Too many of those players, faced by the harsh realities of everyday life, simply give up.

We are aware that the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) has talked about restructuring and 'professionalising' the club structures. Presumably that will reduce the waste of talent now taking place. But the JFF needs to get beyond words.

The JFF should also encourage young footballers by providing as much exposure as possible regionally and internationally. Calendar international age-group tournaments for Under-17s, Under-20s and Under-23s help.

But also, the JFF needs to proactively find exposure for its young home-based players in friendlies against Caribbean Football Union member countries, for example. We need much, much more of those initiatives which brought young Jamaican and Trinidadian national teams up against each other last year. Let's also get regular competition against Barbados, Guyana, St Lucia, Guadeloupe, Cuba, Haiti, et al. It's expensive. But where there's a will, there's a way.

Don't get us wrong. It's good and no doubt profitable to be taking on powerhouse France as they prepare for the FIFA World Cup using Jamaica's 'best players' — whoever those are. However, priority attention must be paid to strengthening and broadening the base of Jamaica's football.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...tball_15809960

[Karl]

Earlier - Observer EDITORIAL:

Football's post-mortem and the way forward

Saturday, January 04, 2014

THE disappointment of the Reggae Boyz's failure to qualify for the Brazil World Cup Finals has affected us all.

It would have been a perfect backdrop had the Boyz qualified for their second World Cup Finals in the vast and beautiful South American nation that shares so much with Jamaica, culturally and otherwise.

But as we agonise over not being numbered among the 32 nations that will jostle for the game's most precious prize between June 12 and July 13, 2014 the time is also ripe for us to reflect on the costly mistakes that unwittingly engineered our downfall.

We have not heard of one just yet, but we are sure that prudent wisdom would dictate a post-mortem of the failed Brazil 2014 crusade. It's important that the country does everything possible to safeguard itself from repeating the errors of the last campaign.

From where we sit, it is clear that all the functioning parts of the football programme failed to click on this occasion and we are left to rue the miserable end result where Jamaica finished at the bottom of the six-nation tournament with five points.

We are convinced there were shortcomings in planning, execution, team selection, tactics, and a wide range of other relevant connections.

The scope of what went wrong, we suspect, is so far-reaching that no one person should shoulder the blame. Therefore, responsibility, we offer, should be borne from a collective point of view.

To avoid a repeat of the pitfalls of the Brazil 2014 campaign, we should set targets and unflinchingly strive to achieve their success. We must have strong systems in place to drive the various programmes.

We must avoid a repeat of the humiliation of the last Caribbean Cup, where as defending champions, we failed to come out of the group phase.

That failure meant our Boyz did not qualify for the CONCACAF Gold Cup, where we missed a glorious opportunity to get vital match practice during the final phase of the World Cup qualifying campaign.

We should not accept ever again our marquis Boyz lying idle on FIFA calendar dates, while our likely opponents are busy sharpening their skills for us. We should, henceforth, optimise every chance we get to build team chemistry.

Sadly, the New Year dawned on us with an air of uncertainty about whether or not we will be able to successfully retain the services of the experienced coach, the German Mr Winfried Schafer.

We have reported that he has in his hands a new contract from the JFF, but is yet to sign. We fear that Mr Schafer may be stalling to weigh his options in a market where his credentials would be attractive to potential employers in far stronger financial positions than ours.

We await with bated breaths his final answer, which should come by mid-January.

With or without Mr Schafer, however, the show must go on. Our Under-20 Reggae Girlz will, in under a week, begin their final quest for a historic World Cup qualification in the Cayman Islands. Both Under-17 and Under-20 men's teams will later this year have their Caribbean elimination play-offs.

For the senior Boyz, they have the CFU Caribbean Cup towards the end of the year. Between now and then, there are four FIFA calendar windows for friendly international games.

For their sake, we hope the Boyz take full advantage.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...rward_15732430