ST THOMAS, US Virgin Islands — When Jamaica Under-17 striker Omar Thompson scored against his school Kingston College in a practice match at Stadium East field last Monday, he claimed it was aimed at sending a message.

The 15-year-old, who is a member of the national Under-17 team here participating in the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) play-offs, was hoping to kill two birds with one stone in the match that ended 5-2 in favour of the national outfit.

Hungry to be selected for his school’s Manning Cup team, plus making sure to consolidate his place in the national 20-man squad here, Thompson seized the moment to shine.

“I felt good that I was able to score against my team and beat them on top of it. It was to show the coach (Ludlow Bernard) that I should be on that Manning Cup team… and I want to show my national coach (Andrew Edwards) that I am ready,” he told the Jamaica Observer at the team’s hotel in the US Virgin Islands yesterday.

The jury is still out on whether his ploy worked in impressing the KC coach, who can’t be happy about losing a game, especially when one of his very own helped to sink the ship.

The fact that Thompson is here on national duty means that his shenanigans were partly successful.

And even though he has not been fully in training with the North Street bunch, the former Vauxhall High School student has high expectations for his current school in the upcoming Manning Cup season, which gets underway in September.

“I am confident that we have a good team that can challenge for a title because we have a lot of new players, plus we are working very hard, as we are serious this year,” he said.

A reality that most student-athletes have come to know and cannot escape is the acrobatics of balancing the book and their sport, and Thompson claims mastery at the tricky juggling act.

“It’s important to balance the book and the football, so when I have tests I have to take a break to study. So when it’s football time, it’s football time, and when it’s book time, it’s book time. So far, I am doing well, but I need to improve in some areas,” noted Thompson, a third former.

In Jamaica’s opening game of phase one of the CFU World Cup qualifying tournament against Guyana at the Lionel Roberts Stadium here on Friday, Thompson crafted his own assessment of his team’s 4-1 victory.

“I think we started out well with a high-press game, but we needed to be more compact in the midfield, but we became more compact in the midfield in the second half.

“As far as my performance goes, I think I needed to communicate more and I wasn’t in the game so much in the first half, but in the second half I had more impact,” he said.

Thompson, who hails from Bull Bay, St Andrew, holds the view that his team should have scored more from the chances created, because one never knows when the final outcome could be adjudicated by goal difference.

“We could have scored more goals as we got a lot of chances that we didn’t put away,” he noted.

Thompson does not seem bothered by the matter of goal difference as he expressed confidence his team will qualify comfortably for the CFU finals slated for Trinidad September 16-25.

“I am confident that we can go through as long as we work as a team. Also, the coach teaches us a lot of stuff that can help us to improve our ability,” he said.

In Jamaica’s second game against group leaders Antigua and Barbuda today, Thompson knows what it will take for the Young Reggae Boyz to sew up victory. “We have to come out strong and move the ball faster, and we have to be more compact from the start and once we do that, we will get more opportunities and score more goals,” he noted.

Thompson, who was substituted late in Friday’s match, vows to give a better showing in today’s match, considering he finds favour with the coach. With his inspiration coming from the global game’s ‘big three’, then something special could be on the horizon.

“My idols are Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar… with Ronaldo I look at how he thinks about the game and how he is able to motivate himself, and it’s the same with Messi and Neymar,” Thomspon ended.