PORTO FELIZ, Brazil — As the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) continues to seek ways to help with the advancement of the local football programme, the wholesale development of coaches remains one of the areas of emphasis.

JFF’s general secretary Horace Reid, who returned home after spending more than a week in Brazil, said the administration intends to organise a group of coaches for a two-week development stint in Brazil some time soon.

“To be specific, one of the ideas we are exploring for this summer is to see if we can put together six to 12 coaches in a programme for two or three weeks in Brazil. At this point we are looking at the Premier League and a combination of the schoolboy leagues.

“I will be having discussions with the directors of our coaching school set-up, the Premier League Clubs Association and the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) to see if we can collectively sit down and look at how we can enhance what we started two years ago at UTech when we launched the coaching school,” noted Reid.

Critical in any broad-based programme, Reid notes, is to have local coaches exposed and familiar with new and more advanced training methods, as it is recognised that trainers have the awesome responsibility of preparing and developing our players for domestic and international competitions.

“We have recognised that football is evolving, the game is ever changing and most of our coaches in Jamaica have not been exposed sufficiently, if any at all, to the international community and what’s happening out there,” said Reid, who was in Brazil finalising a training camp for the senior Reggae Boyz in preparation for this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup in the USA.

“Yes we watch games on television, we see different styles and systems, but in terms of how we break that down, how we conduct training sessions, how we help our players to improve on the fundamentals and take advantage of the science in the sport, we still have a huge gap between what we are doing at home and what obtains in the developed football communities,” said the experienced football administrator, who has coached at the club level in Jamaica.

Reid, also chairman of CONCACAF’s administration committee, said Jamaica as a footballing country has been enamored with the Brazilian way of preparing teams and playing the game, so it’s natural to continue with this as the country’s first taste of international success came with a Brazilian at the helm of the programme.

“Through the stint we made with coach (Rene) Simoes and his team, we’ve had success at the international level with this philosophy… but we have to go one step further, we need to broaden our base so more coaches need to be more exposed to the philosophy,” he argued.

Senior head coach, Theodore Whitmore, recently returned from Brazil after a three-week attachment with top clubs in the football-mad country.