By all indications, it would appear that the puzzle in preparation for a tough season is coming together for Portmore United.

The Jamaican club is already steep in its preseason activation as it tightens the screws in preparation for the defence of their Red Stripe Premier League title.

But before they kick-start that campaign in September, the St Catherine-based club will have home-and-away dates with Costa Rica’s AD Santos de Guapiles in the Scotiabank CONCACAF League.

Portmore, the six-time Jamaica Premier League champions, will travel to Costa Rica on August 1 for the first leg, then will play host to AD Santos in Jamaica on August 8 in the knockout tournament, seen as CONCACAF’s second-tier club competition.

“Last season (2017-2018), we started preparation late and this negatively impacted on our performance and results. This season we have commenced two weeks earlier than the last time, [as] this will accord the players better background work and provide a more solid, preparatory foundation for our first matches on 1st and 9th August, respectively, versus Santos FC of Costa Rica,” said the club’s general manager, Clive Marshall.

The club official says he is aware that Portmore, even with their quality, will have two tough matches against the Costa Rica outfit.

“Of course we recognise the enormity of the challenge, as Santos was the beaten finalist [in the] last edition of the CONCACAF League. Also, the Costa Rican League is regarded as the strongest in Central America. This, however, is not a negative, but a tremendous opportunity our players should embrace,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

With more opportunities emerging for international tournaments for local clubs, Marshall noted that his club has crafted a model to manage the inherent burden of increased competitive activity.

“We appreciate the challenges of balancing international and domestic competitions with our roster. We need to be sufficiently deep to be able to have success on both platforms — local and international.

“This has budgetary ramifications as well as technical, physical and mental challenges with maintenance of good competitive form with the squad. We saw the effect of this during the Caribbean Club Championship final stage held in Jamaica in May 2018, following the domestic season,” Marshall said.

He believes that getting the scheduling right for the domestic and international season is key in ensuring optimum performances from clubs.

“Travelling and playing internationally does take its toll on the unit and impact results at key moments. For this reason, we appreciate the need for the organisers of the domestic league, the PFAJ (Professional Football Association of Jamaica), to facilitate a more balanced schedule for the clubs on the international platform. Fatigue, as you know, can be damaging to players’ health and well-being, and the ripple effects also have negative implications for players on the various club rosters invited to the National team,” Marshall reasoned.

For the upcoming season, Portmore have seen massive player movement in both directions as the club rationalises its human capital.

“The 2018-2019 season will see a very significant roster turnover from last season. Nineteen players who were on our roster have moved on. Among them are Ewan Grandison, Michael Binns, Andre Dyce, Sue-Lae McCalla, Stephen Williams, Dicoy Williams and Damian Binns. Jermie Lynch has gone on loan to the Vietnamese league.

“All these are very talented and experienced players whose replacement will not come easy. We are, therefore, back in a rebuilding mode, and we appreciate this is a process and we need to be patient and meticulous with our chemistry and competitive development.

“We’re looking at some young talents locally and from markets like Suriname and Haiti. If we move forward with these young players, we need to be cognisant this will be a longer-term project and the need to be patient. We prefer to be positive about the process and are hopeful for the best,” Marshall noted.

Portmore, which strategically relocated to St Catherine in 2003 from Clarendon where the club was known as Hazard United, is one of few Jamaican clubs that has shaped itself off a professional model and has pursued an agenda along those lines.

“Portmore United Football Club has been very transparent with its philosophy, which is the development of players for matriculation into international markets and the various national teams.

“We have been relatively successful with this model over the past 15 or so years. We have managed to matriculate more than 20 players to leagues in Europe, Asia, North America and the Caribbean, and we intend to stick with this model as we believe it has created the necessary incentives for our players to focus on their holistic development,” Marshall ended.

Portmore were eliminated in the first round of the inaugural edition of the CONCACAF League in 2017, going down to Panama’s Plaza Amador 5-4 on penalties after both clubs registered an identical 1-0 win in the home-and-away tie.

The CONCACAF League is an annual continental football club competition played in Central America and the Caribbean. It features 16 clubs — 13 from Central America and three from the Caribbean — in a home-and-away knockout format.

The winner of the competition earns automatic qualification to the confederation’s marquee club competition, the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League.

— Sean Williams