JAMAICA’S football boss, Captain Horace Burrell, believes the national programme possesses the required technical minds and footballing talent to guide the nation to another senior FIFA World Cup Finals.

The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) president, who on Sunday announced he backed out of running for the CFU top job to fully focus on the Brazil 2014 World Cup campaign, said head coach Theodore ‘Tappa’ Whitmore and his team have the full support of the Federation and its board of directors.

“The Jamaican public can feel very confident in the coaching and playing talent available for the campaign. We have seen very steady and fundamental growth in the development of the programme and the technical leadership has demonstrated very good judgement in the way they have prosecuted the project,” noted Burrell, who remains an executive member of CONCACAF’s ruling committee.

“We are also excited with both the foreign and local talent and the future is indeed looking very bright,” he added.

Looking back, this is the first time in a spell that Jamaica were entering crucial World Cup qualifiers without a foreign coach at the helm, and this, Burrell boasts, is a telling indication the belief placed in the Whitmore-led team in taking the technical programme to the next level.

“Coach Whitmore has matured beyond the expectation of many. The support he has received from the Federation through the international courses he has been exposed to and the experienced coaches he has under-studied have served to validate the JFF’s confidence in his capacity to lead the World Cup Qualifying campaign.

“Whitmore’s selection of coach (Alfredo) Montesso was a brilliant choice and demonstrated maturity and self-confidence on his part. He will also be well supported by the very experienced Brazilian technical director, Professor Walter Gama, among others,” said Burrell.

He added he was satisfied with the chemistry between staff and players and “indeed we have a good team behind the team”.

In a bid to dispel claims that Whitmore does not enjoy full autonomy in team selection and that he faces interference from the hierachy of the Federation in this process, Burrell said: “Coach Whitmore has always had full autonomy in team selection and he and his staff enjoys the confidence of the JFF.”

Whitmore, Jamaica’s two-goal hero in a 2-1 win over Japan at the France 1998 World Cup Finals, entered the national programme as a young and inexperienced coach but is thought to have made quantum leaps in his technical development in a short time.

Burrell, a newly appointed member of FIFA’s Olympic Tournaments Committee, told the Jamaica Observer that the technical agenda of the ‘Mission to Rio’ campaign appears to be meeting core goals.

“The JFF is very confident about the development of the team and the work that commenced in 2009 in rebuilding and refocusing has already begun to take shape,” he noted.

Burrell outlined that over the course of the past months, the programme has changed shape to facilitate new approaches and thinking by a dynamic team.

“The technical staff has redesigned the preparation with a focus on international friendlies as a critical element. Consequently, we will not be staging a training camp in Brazil but instead are actively finalising (local) camps around the international games,” Burrell explained.

Since the start of the year and faced with a downsized FIFA calendar for international matches, the Boyz have been able to play four friendlies, with three more to come before the team bows into World Cup qualifying action against Guatemala at ‘The Office’ on June 8.

“We have been able to organise a series of international friendlies despite the very limited FIFA international match dates during the first five months of the year… these games would prove very beneficial for the local talent and also for the preparation of our team going into the qualifiers,” outlined the visionary leader behind Jamaica’s five appearances at various men’s age-group World Cup.

In February alone the Boyz played three matches, where they were victorious against Cuba (1-0 and 3-0) in a two-game series in Jamaica and then journeying to Auckland to face New Zealand, winning 3-2.

In March they had one game against Central American outfit Costa Rica, which ended goal-less at the National Stadium.

Three warm-up games are scheduled before the June 8 World Cup qualifying opener — on May 18 they face Guyana in Montego Bay before hosting Panama at ‘The Office’ nine days later.

On June 1, the Boyz tackle Panama in that country for the likely curtain-call on their pre-tournament preparation.

“These three matches will also provide preparation for the UK-based players in particular, since they will be out of competition. We do expect some of the new recruits to be available for these games,” Burrell said.

Among those who should be free to play roles in the upcoming matches are Ricardo Fuller, Claude Davis, Omar Daley, Damian Stewart, Keammar Daley, Christopher Humphrey (debut), Nathan Smith annd Marlon King.

The veteran football executive thinks that while the technical staff has established its core squad for the World Cup campaign, equally important is an ongoing programme to deepen and broaden the squad for future reference.

“The core of the team has been established, but we have to continue improving on the general squad. Experiences garnered from previous campaigns demand that we deepen the pool with quality and not only quantity, as consideration must be given towards injuries, loss of form, suspensions from cards, etc,” Burrell concluded.