Football still a captive of COVID, World Cup campaign remains off the rails
Published:Tuesday | January 4, 2022 | 12:08 AMAudley Boyd/News Editor
Western Bureau:
THE PRECARIOUS state of the World Cup qualifying campaign and the consequent December 21 sacking of national senior men’s football team head coach, Theodore ‘Tappa’ Whitmore, mirrored the state of Jamaica’s football in 2021, as it continues to suffer from the ravages of COVID-19.
Owing to the global pandemic, the sport was sidelined for a year and a half, making a return without spectators on June 26 with a scaled-down version of the Premier League, then the November 12 kick-off for the Manning and daCosta Cup schoolboy football competitions.
Parish football, since the first quarter in 2020, remains relegated to the sidelines.
And, given their current path, Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz appear headed for a similar position when the World Cup Finals take centre stage in 2022.
From the start, the programme stood on shaky ground with the players and their employer, the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), embroiled in the decades-long remuneration battle.
Indicators of that dispute being quashed with money settlement ahead of the July-August Concacaf Gold Cup were, if only fleetingly flattering, met with mass recruitment of British-based players, which raised eyebrows in some quarters and suggestions about the call-ups being retaliatory, against the background of bitter and much-publicised negotiations.
Nevertheless, the Gold Cup presented a grand run at Concacaf’s premier football title, and more over, preparation for the all-important World Cup qualification, with a guaranteed trio of first-round matches.
Instead of fine-tuning, it manifested a trial exercise for many players, unknown and untried, in the Jamaica set-up, even as the Boyz registered a 2-0 win over Suriname, a 2-1 victory against Guadeloupe, and a 0-1 loss against a Costa Rica team, which ended their game with 10 men. The results were enough to earn Jamaica a second-round berth, where their journey ended in disappointment with a 0-1 loss to hosts United States.
Immediately after came the September start of the World Cup campaign and with it, some hardly surprising disastrous results and further evidence of Jamaica’s football disjoint in the opening window.
There was a 1-2 loss away to Mexico, a horrific 0-3 home loss against Panama, and a 1-1 tie in Costa Rica.
Coming out of the opening game against Mexico, there were eight changes to the starting team for the home match against Panama at the National Stadium. The scoreline reflected the lack of chemistry in the team.
Injuries and player availability affected the squad, which was short of the required numbers for the last game, even while members of the Jamaica contingent left here on a chartered flight, right at the back end of the Jamaica Premier League season, which was completed barely one week earlier.
Barring a 2-0 away win against Honduras, the worst team in the eight-nation qualifiers, as they sit bottom of the standings with a measly three points, the Reggae Boyz have not been consistent enough in other games and, ahead of the January window this month end, occupy sixth place on seven points.
Marking an upturn in form, understanding and the cohesion that was lacking at the start, six of those points have come in their last four matches, all unbeaten and marked by two outstanding goals from one of the British-based players with any real class, West Ham United’s Michail Antonio, whose spectacular strike earned a 1-1 tie against the United States inside the National Stadium on November 16.
That day marked the anniversary of Jamaica’s qualification to its only senior men’s FIFA World Cup, France 1998.
Now, over two decades on, with eight of the 14 matches in this final-round qualifying stage complete, the outlook remains very uncertain, with Canada heading the standings on 16 points, the United States second on 15, and Mexico and Panama level on 14 points. Only the top three countries are guaranteed qualification, while the fourth gets a second chance in a play-off against the Oceania champions.
The unsure nature of the national’s play-off chances took another twist when Whitmore was fired.
His replacement, another member of the 1998 cast, Paul Hall, has named Leon Bailey as the centrepiece of his plans for the remainder of the campaign. But with Bailey, who has hardly played for Jamaica this campaign due to injury, still suffering with hamstring issues and unable to represent his English Premier League (EPL) club Aston Villa, Hall might have to sift out another plan.
The decision to fire Whitmore, football aside, was fraught with speculation and one member of the JFF’s board of directors, Danny Beckford, accused the island’s governing body of the sport of disregarding its own constitution on the matter, saying Whitmore was fired without approval from the board.
Also, the JFF president and head of the board, Michael Ricketts, had been engulfed in another much-publicised matter, a legal fight with Clarendon businessman Ainsley Lowe, which, apart from fines, has implications in the context of FIFA’s ethics code governing discrimination.
On the matter of money, the JFF’s earning potential has been suffocated through the COVID effect, with the government’s refusal to allow spectator access for almost all its matches. So far, spectators have been denied entry to all but one of the matches, the November 16 US match for which 5,000 were allowed inside the near 30,000-capacity venue.
Whatever they would have made is a tip in the bucket, considering the federation forked out $110 million for airfare, accommodation, salaries, per diem, etc, to cover bills for matches in the September window only.
At the local level, football made its long-awaited return with the Jamaica Premier League, which was won by the Rudolph Speid-led Cavalier Soccer Club to end its 40-year drought. Cavalier defeated Waterhouse 5-4 on penalties, after both teams had played to a 1-1 finish.
Practically all the matches were played on astro turf at the UWI/JFF Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence.
As practically all the matches were played in sunshine, competing on the astro turf presented major challenges for players, owing to the heat. And, there were no spectators.
If only by rule, a similar situation occurred for the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association Manning and daCosta Cup competitions, where spectators found their own vantage points outside the different venues across the island to watch.
Teams were required to camp in a ‘bubble’ for the duration of the competition, and the number of schools was significantly reduced for both competitions, with 52 in the rural area daCosta Cup and 21 in the Corporate Area Manning Cup.
St Mary’s College withdrew from the Manning Cup early, following a 26-0 hammering by St Catherine High School, while Camperdown High, one of the title favourites, along with Tivoli Gardens Comprehensive High, were booted from the competition for using ineligible players.
For the first time in many moons, the champions were not decided before Christmas, as respective defending champions, Clarendon College in the daCosta Cup and Jamaica College in the Manning Cup, remained on course for a repeat when the fixtures close this month.
These will precede the next round of Concacaf World Cup qualifiers at month end, when the Reggae Boyz relaunch a miraculous attempt to strengthen the precarious state of Jamaica’s football.