Jamaica head coach Winfried Schafer urged players to work harder to earn and keep places in the national senior set-up.

“Players must fight for their positions… players can’t feel like they must play as they will sleep (relax)… the players must fight for their positions and the best players will play,” said the German.

Schafer, who took over the reins from Theodore ‘Tappa’ Whitmore at the tailend of Jamaica’s failed Brazil 2014 World Cup campaign, expressed concern with the poor transition of junior players to the senior ranks.

“I remember two years ago with the Under-17 team in the (Mexico) World Cup, which players from that team are presently in the national team? You had a very good team, and only Alvas (Powell) is in this team, where are the 11 players from this team, you see what I mean?”

The former Cameroon coach indicated that part of the slow development and eventually transition of players is due, in part, on the players themselves.

“These players have to work, work and keep working, and this is what we want,” he said, as he addressed a post-match press conference after the Boyz played to a 2-2 draw with Honduras in the final World Cup qualifier at the National Stadium on Tuesday night.

With a month left on his contract and negotiation still ongoing, Schafer has maintained his futuristic rhetoric regarding the programme. He said going forward, Jamaica’s goalscoring problem has to be a priority from a technical point of view.

“We have to learn to shoot to the goal, we must learn to get more passes to the strikers, the strikers must learn to come for the ball, but we cannot in two days change what we have for years.

“What we have to do is take things step by step. I want to talk to the coaches in the clubs as we need strikers, I see a young boy in one of the clubs and he has potential, but he must work harder and he needs the help of his coaches,” Schafer noted.

In 10 matches of the hexagonal of the CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers, Jamaica scored five goals — one a penalty and the other an own goal — and conceded 13, which summed up the team’s form on the offensive front.

Schafer also said that Jamaica’s preparation in the final phase was woefully inadequate and was far behind the five other contenders. But moving ahead, he has a clear vision as to what needs to be done.

“For the future we need camps and we need friendly matches, and I know that the young players like Kemar (Lawrence) and Romario (Campbell) want this (level) of training… we have good players in school football and for the 2018 World Cup campaign we need to see some of these players (coming though),” he noted.

“Our best performance (of the hexagonal round) was the first 70 minutes against the USA and the second half against Honduras… but the past is not important, it’s the future that is important and we have to work professionally,” Schafer added.

If retained as coach of the senior Boyz, Schafer said he would focus on building a base of local players, but warned that he would keep looking outside of Jamaica for talent to complement the home-based stock.

“We can’t build a (strong) team of only local players, we have to find the players from overseas and then we will have a good team — the Jamaican team,” noted the 63-year-old German.

USA (22 points), Costa Rica (18) and Honduras (15) have booked automatic spots to the Brazil 2014 showpiece, while kingpins Mexico (11) have found themselves in unfamiliar territory as the fourth-place finisher who will have to play-off against Oceania champions New Zealand in a home-and-away tie next month for a possible additional spot for CONCACAF.

Panama (eight) join Jamaica (five) as the nations who failed to progress.