LEARNING FROM THE LAST WORLD CUP CAMPAIGN

Now that the dream of Brazil has been shattered, the Jamaica Football Federation is tasked with putting another together. The road to Russia in 2018 beckons. But if that dream is not to end another disaster the way this last one did, the JFF has to be willing to learn from its past mistakes and be willing to seek help where necessary.

Nobody knows everything and even the brightest among us occasionally need to consult with persons not as smart but who have been blessed with the types of experiences that are invaluable. Among the salvageable pieces scattered about are a good coach, one which based on his vast experience could turn out to be our best one yet.

Winfried Schafer is yet to win a game as coach of the Reggae Boyz. After four games he has one loss and three draws. But then you have to consider that he took over a team in June after Theodore Whitmore was canned after the Boyz lost 2-0 in Honduras and had not looked like winning a game in the five games before that disastrous performance.

Schafer came in and almost immediately, without getting a chance to know his players, had the team playing better. A lot of what Schafer brought was years of success as a player at Borussia Monchengladbach that won five Bundesliga titles in the 1970s. He was a member of the 1970 team.

As a manager he led Cameroon to the Africa Cup of Nations title in 2002 and  Al Ahli to the United Arab Emirates League title in 2006. He has had many other successes in between and after those periods and it is this wealth of experience at winning that he brings now to Jamaica. We have to be prepared to give him what he wants; what he needs to get Jamaica to have a winning programme once again.

Schafer, I feel, needs to be given a free hand to develop players and to implement programmes that he thinks will be essential to the success of the process that he will guide. The JFF also has to find a way to get a few decent playing surfaces of international standard in the country on which players can develop their games to the level that will put them on par with the best players in the CONCACAF region. There are other things that are needed but these getting these things done will be a good start.

Also among the scattered pieces is a crop of talented but under-developed players who can be shaped into quality players with some special  work to get them up to par with what is needed to mount a competitive campaign. Focus over the next two years at the start of the next campaign should be on getting a pool of players that would have been assessed and put into specially designed programmes to get them up to par.

These players and those based overseas also need to be given opportunities to gel. That means many practice games, as many as possible, against teams in the Caribbean, and the region to give the pool a chance to become familiar with each other.

That pool of players along with others who might show themselves over the next couple of years, whether they are playing in college here or abroad or in high school, will provide the depth that is critical to a long and arduous campaign. We all saw what happened when Nyron Noseworthy got hurt early in the last campaign. A good defense is critical to any protracted campaign. They key to winning games is to score and not be scored upon.

We also need to find four or five dynamic creative midfield players, something that Jamaica clearly lacked in this failed run at Brazil. Strikers can’t score without the ball and if midfielders aren’t good enough to get the ball to the strikers then they should not be in the programme. The time has come when we should not be settling for the mediocre. The beat the best we have to field the best.

But all these things make up only part of what is needed. It has become apparent that the JFF lacks the skill sets, the acumen, to put a proper programme together. That expertise is available however, but has never been utilized. There are people out there like UEFA A standard coach Jerome Samuels and administrators like Lorne Donaldson who are more than willing to make themselves available to the national programme but someone needs to reach out to them.

Both these men and several others are based abroad but are blessed with the kind of expertise and experience that the JFF lacks. Pride needs to be swallowed and these people brought in to lend a helping hand.

The more of us who shoulder the burden, the easier the load. It doesn’t hurt to ask for help.