Former national midfielder Hector Wright is calling on the executive of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) to put aside egos and selfishness and make an effort to give the Reggae Boyz all the help they can in an effort to qualify for the Fifa World Cup set for next year in Doha, Qatar.

Wright — who made his debut for the senior national men’s team in 1988 and played 110 times, scoring 15 goals — said members of the executive who lacked football administrative skills at that level should move aside and allow others more qualified to take over.

The talented midfielder, who was once invited to Finland to play amateur football while he was still a schoolboy at Herbert Morrison Technical, said he was concerned as a former player, watching the ongoing situation between the federation and a group of senior players that threatened to disrupt the World Cup qualification preparation.

“As a past player, I have a genuine concern about the direction our national football is taking and the people who are at the helm of it,” Wright told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday.

“As I sat and watched the game against the US, I’m wondering if we are going to sit and don’t speak out about the present situation where the JFF executives [and players are pulling apart instead] of pulling together,” Wright noted.

Wright, who played alongside present Head Coach Theodore Whitmore in the build-up to the qualification for the World Cup in 1998, said it was difficult for players who were plying their trades in top-quality leagues where they are exposed to first-class administration of the game, to now have to be dealing with local football administrators who appear ill-equipped at various levels of the administrative process.

“You have people working in the federation who know nothing about football and its management,” he argued.

“People who cannot relate to anything where the sport is concerned and that is just a part of the reason why we can’t expand the sport here in Jamaica,” he argued.

Wright, who coached Anchovy High in the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) daCosta Cup in 2019, as they qualified for the quarter-finals, added: “We have players who have gone abroad to play professionally, and they now understand how players should be treated at that level, so my question is why these inexperienced people that we have in the federation aren’t willing to learn for the betterment of the game and what it can do for our nation?”

Wright said despite Whitmore’s success with the team, the coach needed more help.

“I sat and watched Coach Whitmore build this team with limited resources, and at this stage of our football, right in this our World Cup year we are allowing some egotistic, inexperienced people, who can’t relate to anything where the sport is concerned to mess up everything,” Wright said, in his scathing criticism of the JFF’s top brass’s handling of affairs. “Then we turn around and blame the coaching staff, consisting of three people, to be the reason we fail.”

Among some of the recent complaints by senior players that Wright referenced were “players travelling economy class for hours to play, while executives travel business class to sit in the stands”.

“…But players can’t have a voice, we need to do something as a nation quickly and our first focus should be revamping the executive body,” Wright ended.