JUST two months ago, this newspaper had reason to hail Jamaica’s senior national football coaching staff and the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) for a thoroughly efficient show in winning the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Caribbean Cup on home soil.

Sadly, inefficiency has marked the campaign by the national Under-20s in the CONCACAF Under-20 Championship currently being held here.

It’s not only that at press time Friday evening Jamaica had just one point from three games. Truthfully, the quality of football from the young Jamaicans has been shambolic at best. Barring a major miracle, Jamaica will not be among those qualifying for the Under-20 World Cup in New Zealand later this year.

Sharp metaphorical knives are out, and head coach of the Under-20 group, Mr Theodore Whitmore, and his assistant Mr Lenworth Hyde, will no doubt be feeling the effects, unless that unlikely football miracle happens.

The critics have pointed to flawed team selections among the major reasons for the poor performance by the national team. For sure, there must be questions as to whether there was enough effort to ensure continuity of selection from the Under-17 qualifiers in Panama in 2013. Most players from that tournament, including notable performers in the recent schoolboy football season, are absent from the current squad.

Perhaps there are good reasons for the omission of high achievers such as Mr Raffique Bryan of Jamaica College. But it seems to us that the football-loving public deserve an explanation.

What we can say for certain is that on the only occasion a Jamaica national Under-20 team has qualified for a FIFA World Cup there was strong emphasis on continuity from the previous age group. We refer to 2001 in Argentina when the group, then guided by Mr Wendell Downswell, who is easily one of Jamaica’s most successful coaches at age-group level, had as its core, those players who had qualified for the Under-17 World Cup in 1999.

That effort at continuity, it seems to this newspaper, should be a constant in age-group football. We say that even while appreciating that not all young players will continue to grow and develop and that some will actually fall away.

Also, not just individual young players but teams will decline unless there is methodical and dedicated effort to nurture and develop.

Panama, qualifiers for the Under-17 World Cup on home soil in 2013, appear to have paid attention to that nurturing and development process. That is, if their performance in the current tournament — including their stylish 2-0 win over Jamaica on Wednesday night — can be used as a gauge.

Football followers will recall that back in 2013, Jamaica’s Under-17s held the Panamanians to a 1-1 draw, despite playing with 10 men for much of the game and ending with just nine players on the field.

We recognise that the paucity of professionalism in Jamaican football and the resulting overly heavy reliance on schools slow down development of young footballers. That said, it seems to us that after this campaign, the JFF must do a thorough rethink of how it conducts national age-group programmes. Firing Messrs Whitmore and Hyde will not be enough.