Despite a “good” camp in Amsterdam that was said to have instilled confidence and served to fine-tune some technical and tactical areas, Jamaica’s senior women’s football team Head Coach Lorne Donaldson thinks more work is needed to get the Reggae Girlz where he wants them ahead of the World Cup.

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup will be the ninth edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the quadrennial international association football championship contested by women’s national teams and organised by FIFA. The tournament will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, and is scheduled to take place from 20 July to 20 August 2023.

It will be the first FIFA Women’s World Cup to have more than one host nation, and also the first senior World Cup to be held across multiple confederations, as Australia is in the Asian Confederation, while New Zealand is in the Oceanian Confederation. In addition, this tournament will be the first to feature the expanded format of 32 teams from the previous 24, replicating the same format used for the men’s World Cup from 1998 to 2022.

“The camp was good; I wish we had a game that would have been a proper game, but it was still good. The players worked hard and appear to be dedicated, but we’re still not there. We still have a few more days to go, so we start working on some tactical stuff, and the players are going in with a sense of purpose because they know what’s at stake,” Donaldson said.

On July 23, the 43rd-ranked Reggae Girlz will face the fifth-ranked France in Group F. Following France, the Girlz will face 52nd-ranked Panama on July 29, followed by an August 2 match against 8th-ranked Brazil.

If they want to be competitive, Donaldson has emphasised the significance of maintaining a tight defensive line, being well-organised, and being more effective when in possession.

“I believe France is playing a game [against Australia on Friday], so we might get a look at their starting line-up and just see how we want to approach the game and match up against them and just go from there.

“We still have some tactical issues to consider and work on. I believe our players understand that they must come up and be prepared to perform, which makes life a little simpler at times, but we must hold them accountable for some things, particularly tactical errors,” he continued. “If we want to be competitive, we will need to defend well, be well-organised, and be more effective when we have possession.”

The Reggae Girlz will play a last warm-up game against Morocco before the tournament begins, which Donaldson believes will help to lock in their strategy for efficient execution in Australia.

“We’ll use that game to try some things, and we’ll give as many players as possible some minutes because the goal is to improve the work that we’re doing, and we found some things that we need to clean up. So, we’ll take this game to achieve that, and then go over some footage with the players to see how much we can improve our execution,” the coach explained.