Jamaica’s National Under-20 football squad resumes preparations for the final round of the CONCACAF qualifiers with a four-day training camp which started on Monday and ended on Thursday.

According to assistant coach, Andrew Edwards, who is overseeing the team in the absence of coach Wendell Downswell who is away in Brazil with the Under-17s, says the process of identifying new talent is ongoing as the group fine-tunes for its trip to Guatemala in April.

Edwards explained that for the first round of qualifiers in Guyana last year, the technical staff was convinced that the best crop of players was not available to them then.

“When we went to Guyana, we believed we didn’t have the best set of players the country could put together, as it was a hurried situation.

But we did the best we could with what we had available, so what we want to do now is add some quality and depth to that group,” he said.

“You could call this a scouting mission and so far it has been a success,” Edwards added.

Assistant senior team coach, Bradley Stewart, who is assisting Edwards, agreed that they did not have enough time to assembly the best talent to go to Guyana.

“Now we are looking farther and wider and hopefully we could get more of our talented players because we want the best team for the country and that is the reason why we are searching,” he said.

Edwards, the St Elizabeth Technical High school coach, said a number of players have already made good impressions and appear to possess the quality that the country is looking for.

And with another two camps set for January, he believes that will wrap up the selection process.

“We want to come down to a squad of 28 to 30, and from then we would focus our attention on our preparations going into February and March and the tournament itself,” he said.

He noted that most of the players who played in the early qualifying round in Guyana, will not be invited to these camps, as the focus will be on looking closely at new players.

“A few of them will come back next week with a fresh set of players… and we will do the same thing the following week, so by that time we will have been able to look at all the players and see if they have quality to add,” he continued.

While the emphasis is on holistic development of the team, the forward line seems to be the main Achilles heel at this stage.

“Certainly the strongest part of our team is the defensive quartet, but our goalkeeping is one of the areas that we think needs some improving… (also) a striker or two could add some quality to what we already have which will auger very well for the programme,” noted Edwards.