Maxwell blasts Premier League

New Kingston FC Head Coach Geoffrey Maxwell says that the quality of the Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL) has declined in recent years.

Maxwell, who recently took charge of the KSAFA Major League side, says that this is because of the type of players that exists in the RSPL today.

"Based off what I have seen of some of the name sheets in the Premier League at the moment, they're not sides that you can't coach [against] and beat," he says.

"Half of them [the sides] now are bringing in a lot of schoolboy players. Premier League and Dacosta Cup and Manning Cup are three different things. Sometimes, you can take a fool and programme him and make him go out there and win in the Premier League because, I think, the Premier League defenders are poor, but that's just my opinion. I think the attacking players in the Premier League nowadays are also poor."

It is for this reason that Maxwell, who drew his first game with New Kingston after taking over a couple weeks ago, believes he could get them into Jamaica's top flight and do well with them. He believes his team has the talent but just lacks experience. If he is to make this objective a reality, it will, however, take him at least two seasons as the Major League is two divisions below the Premier League.

He says that the Premier League's poor quality, as he describes it, comes down to the poor development structures that exist locally at the moment.

Maxwell wants coaches to get rid of egos that exist in the youth level of Jamaican football and wants coaches to stop letting players see themselves as the focal points of their teams, but instead realise that it is a team effort, which requires humility and cooperation.

The coach goes even further to say that Jamaica's youth system has been led to become a "free for all".

"If we are supposed to go into the Caribbean again and start dominating it, we're going to have to look to outlay development programmes. We have none!"