With the certainty of elimination from the Fifa World Cup Finals in Qatar just the loss of two points away, Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) president Michael Ricketts and his administration are preparing for the inevitable as he says the show must continue.

Assessing the current standing of the Reggae Boyz in the ongoing Concacaf Final Round World Cup qualifying campaign following Sunday’s 2-3 loss to Panama inside the Estadio Rommel Fernandez, Ricketts told the Jamaica Observer that, though disappointed with some of the performances at both the Concacaf Gold Cup last summer and the World Cup qualifiers, misfortune also plagued his team.

“We are indeed very disappointed, with both the Gold Cup performance and certainly at the World Cup qualifiers, but we continue to press on and work very closely with our sponsors, our technical people and the players and see what will happen from here on,” Ricketts said.

He added: “Some of the results were unsatisfactory even though you want to think that the performances were not bad, but the breaks just didn’t come our way; a lot of things didn’t work for us.

“VAR, for example, might have been a little bit unkind because without VAR there was this controversial goal against US, and then when we got VAR we got a red card which I think cost us the game against Mexico because it’s always going to be a huge challenge to compete against Mexico for 45 minutes with 10 players. We conceded some very late goals and we just thought that we were unlucky, but that’s water under the bridge.”

From 10 games played thus far, the Boyz have managed just a solitary win [away to Honduras], accompanied by four drawn results and five losses. They have scored nine goals but conceded 15 [only Honduras with 19 have conceded more]. They have seven points in seventh place, with Canada (22), US (18), Mexico (18), Panama (17), Costa Rica (13), El Salvador (nine), and Honduras (three) completing the eight-nation points standings.

And though the JFF boss wants his team to fight to the bitter end, he’s already looking ahead to the rest of the units as they prepare to embark on their respective journeys.

“The truth is that it is not impossible but highly improbable at this stage, but we are going to fight to the very end and, having had discussions with the technical staff, they are still working hard and wanting to ensure that we go to the very end,” Ricketts said.

“But the show continues because later on the Nations League starts in June, the senior Reggae Girlz World Cup qualification starts on the 17th of February when we engage Bermuda in a game. In our group will be Bermuda, Grenada, the Dominican Republic and Cayman Islands.

“So we are looking forward to getting through that first round, then we see what happens thereafter.”

Ricketts says it’s important that a certain level of continuity be maintained with the senior Boyz group, and his administration will be having discussions with the technical team in an effort to try to maintain the nucleus of this group.

“We want to be very competitive in the Nations League and soon the Gold Cup will come up again, so we just have to take it one step at a time and work closely with the technical team and the staff to ensure that we have these players stay together.’

Ricketts also stated that his Administration wants to work closely with the female units.

“There is a new coach in place with our women’s senior team and we are very hopeful and optimistic that they will do well, they will bring us some glory and could very well qualify for another global tournament.

“The female Under-17s and Under-20s, their qualifications start mid-year, thereabouts, and so too I think the boys’ Under-17s and Under-20s,” he said.

The plan now is to put the technical staff in place to manage both girls’ youth programmes and boys’ Under-17s and Under-20s, and “when we get back we do have a lot of work to do as we try as best as possible to put a proper programme in place to ensure that there is some level of continuity and some level of quality as we try to put these units together”.

— Ian Burnett