Simpson weighs up Boyz’s challenge
Published:Thursday | December 10, 2020 | 12:06 AMDaniel Wheeler/Staff Reporter
Although the national senior men’s team no longer has a packed summer schedule to contend with next year, team manager Roy Simpson says that navigating both the Gold Cup and the World Cup qualifiers in 2021 will still be a massive challenge.
On Saturday, Concacaf announced the revamped schedule for the region’s World Cup qualifiers, which include the preliminary round of matches. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic resulted in changes to the FIFA calendar, which included the qualifiers. As a result, the new schedule now has the preliminary round starting next March and the final-round tournament beginning in September rather than its previous June date.
The Reggae Boyz, who already qualified for the final round, were initially faced with the possibility of playing a maximum of 10 games in seven weeks, had the final round of qualifying started in June as planned and if they made a deep run in the Gold Cup.
Simpson says that the change allows more preparation time to assemble a competitive squad.
“What changes for us, [it gives] us more preparation time in the sense that we will now have the Gold Cup before our World Cup qualifiers. So, by the time we reach to the Gold Cup, our World Cup qualifying squad would have been in shape and would have been obvious,” Simpson told The Gleaner.
However, Simpson says there will still be challenges, as FIFA increased the number of matches in each international window to three, for all international windows in the latter part of 2021, except November, which will have two. He raised concerns as to how FIFA will address call-ups for those windows.
“How big is the provisional list that we are going to provide to FIFA with regard to the players that we are going to use? Are those numbers going to be more? How do we balance that World Cup qualifying calendar with the respective players club schedule?” Simpson asked.
Jamaica will still have to navigate playing five out of their first seven games away from home beginning with Mexico, the top team in the region.
The revised qualifying structure consists of an eight-team tournament, which will see the top three teams advance to the World Cup and the fourth-place team playing a continental play-off. The final round is now scheduled to finish in March 2022.