SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Jamaica Football Federation President Michael Ricketts is unhappy with the manner in which contractual negotiations between his federation and the World Cup-bound Reggae Girlz were aired in the media.

In fact, he is of the view that the entire episode was totally unwarranted.

“Very disappointed. In fact it certainly would have sent some wrong signals, and in this day and age these would have been all over the word making news internationally, and which would have hurt us somehow. and I think it was most unfortunate because what had happened was that the coach (Hue Menzies) had suggested, in terms of money, and of course negotiating we did a little adjustment and had sent them back to him. and I thought the prudent thing to have done then was to get back in touch with us to say that he was dissatisfied or uncomfortable with whatever aspects of what we had suggested, but instead it went all over the media and made the news internationally, which I think was totally unwarranted,” Ricketts said.

“We have done our due diligence and we have had all those corrected. we don’t want to comment too much on the contracts, except to say that we are in discussions now and we are hopeful that in short order we will be able to have them formalised.

“We will not comment further on the contracts until everything would have been settled and they would have been signed,” insisted the JFF boss.

As regards promised incentives for gaining qualification to the 2019 Fifa World Cup Finals in France, Ricketts had good news.

“We have reached out to a sponsor which will provide some funds so that we can meet the commitment that we had made when the girls actually qualified, so they will be getting their incentives for qualifying in very short order. We are in the process of getting that finalised now, and we have made the commitment that it will be done before they leave for South Africa. The incentives are for both the players and the technical staff,” noted Ricketts.

— Ian Burnett