Jamaica’s interim Head Coach Paul Hall says taking over from Theodore “Tappa” Whitmore comes with mixed emotions.

Last week, the 49-year-old Whitmore was removed as the senior men’s football team coach after the Reggae Boyz endured an inconsistent start to their final-round World Cup qualifying campaign.

Hall, the assistant coach throughout the first eight qualifiers and a former Jamaica teammate of Whitmore before, during and after the country’s historic appearance at the France 1998 World Cup Finals, was elevated to the top job.

“It’s bittersweet, if I’m being brutally honest,” the English-born Hall, 49, told journalists during a press conference yesterday.

“It’s a privilege; it fills me with pride and it’s an honour to lead the team and to carry forward the ambitions, the aspirations and the aim for the people of the country,” said the former national forward.

“Theodore is a good friend and a good colleague and an ex-teammate and we have achieved some great things together. So it was very difficult to take that position,” he added.

“We’ve exchanged messages and spoken about it and I can assure you that he (Whitmore) is behind us and he will be cheering us on and he gives us best wishes. I have to commend him for that because it must be, as it would be for anybody else, quite raw,” Hall said.

The Jamaicans are sixth in the eight-team Concacaf qualifying table with seven points, but still have an outside chance of advancing. Canada lead with 16 points, ahead of United States (15), Mexico (14), Panama (14) and Costa Rica (nine). Seventh-placed El Salvador have six points, while Honduras (three) are at the back of the pack. Each team is left to play six matches.

While the top three nations in the table will progress automatically to the Qatar 2022 World Cup Finals, the fourth-place finisher will head to an intercontinental play-off for another possible spot to Qatar.

Jamaica’s next scheduled qualifier is at home to Mexico on January 27, 2022. On January 30, they are slated to face Panama away before closing the international window against visitors Costa Rica on February 2.

But Hall’s tenure is set to commence with an international friendly away to South American outfit Peru on January 20.

“We have to continue the good work that he [Whitmore] has done and that’s what I’ll be telling the players. It’s the nature of the beast but we have to continue the good work that’s been done by Theodore,” Hall said.

Whitmore, a standout midfielder at the ’98 World Cup, coached Jamaica to the final of the 2017 Concacaf Gold Cup. He was also the man in charge when the Reggae Boyz were eliminated at the semi-finals of the 2019 Gold Cup. He won the Caribbean Cup title as player and coach.

Despite Jamaica’s lowly place on the Concacaf qualifying table, Hall expressed optimism after being given the responsibility to turn the Reggae Boyz ship around.

“I will try my best to go forward and give it the best we’ve got to try [to] qualify us for the World Cup. I am hoping to achieve great things with the team.

“Nobody jumps a flight of stairs in one bound. We have to prepare for Mexico right now and attack each game as if it’s one game. We have to take the last six games one game at a time and just try to get three points out of each game,” he said.

— Sanjay Myers