This time next week the Jamaican football fraternity could be celebrating another close escape with our qualification to the final round of the CONCACAF World Cup qualification.
On the other hand, to use the hackneyed cliché, there could be a pall of gloom over our failure to advance, which could set our programme back a few years.

Despite the heroics of beating Mexico and Honduras, the two most likely qualifiers, the latter scenario seems more likely.

Next Wednesday we need to beat Canada out of contention by four goals and hope the result between Mexico and Honduras go our way.

We have scored just one goal in each of the last two games, albeit against the toughest opponents in the Group and will be up against a Canadian team that has only pride to play for.

Failure to advance will mean we will miss out on well-needed revenue from five home games plus most of the current sponsors who seem only willing to be associated with the Reggae Boyz during World Cup qualification.

Failure to move forward would deal the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) with a serious body blow as to be honest, the executive cannot expect to make much revenue from the upcoming Digicel Caribbean Cup series.

Who is going to pay to go watch Cuba versus Trinidad at the Trelawny Multi-purpose stadium, for example?

There will be a crowd to see the Jamaica games, especially if we advance far into the tournament, but without the overseas-based players, the JFF would be overly optimistic to expect a packed national stadium.

Despite what we hear from the JFF top brass, the hiring of John Barnes on the heels of the firing of Rene Simoes tells me they were not expecting to be in this position with a game to go in the World Cup qualification.

Going ahead with the hiring of Barnes, even though he would not be available for the games against Mexico and Honduras, tells me they had started looking forward to the Digicel series and possible qualification for the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

Miracles do happen however, especially in sports, and our football programme needs only to look at the 1998 World Cup qualification for inspiration.

But we did not have to be in this position today.

There are many ifs and buts along the road to this juncture, but in my opinion it all goes back to JFF president Burrell's knee-jerk firing of former national technical director Bora Milutinovic last year and the hiring of Simoes who was given the proverbial basket to carry water.

Milutinovic's firing disrupted the programme, to say the least, and the hiring of Simoes was a backward move with a setback of several years.

... Female Artistes

Top 10 videos of 2008

Top 10 Artistes Off the Radar for 2008