Chairman of Professional Football Jamaica Limited (PFJL) Christopher Williams said his organisation is very excited about the upcoming Concacaf Club Championship as it will afford Jamaican clubs the opportunity to receive a lot of global attention.

Harbour View, former two-time champions, along with Dunbeholden, have been drawn in Group B. The group also includes Dominican Republic clubs Athletico Pantoja and Cibao.

Williams told the Jamaica Observer that the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) is one of the lowest-ranked club leagues globally; therefore, he is hoping that both Harbour View and Dunbeholden will perform extremely well in the Concacaf tournament, which will help to raise the profile of the local competition.

“All the leagues in the world are ranked and so we as a board are determined to get the Jamaica Premier League into the top 100 leagues in the world and continue to climb the rankings,” said Williams.

“This is the direction that we want to go — the Caribbean Club Championships, the Concacaf Club Championships, and eventually the World Club Championships, so we want to be globally competitive,” he said.

“We want our clubs to be globally competitive, and having dominated the local leagues, we want to test them against their Caribbean counterparts and keep going up the rankings.

“We just don’t want to have a strong league, we want to have a league that is also globally competitive and so this Caribbean Club Championship is a step in the right direction,” he stated.

Harbour View and the St Catherine-based Dunbeholden, the latter contesting the competition for the first time, will square off in their opening match in the competition on August 23 at Sabina Park in Kingston.

Harbour View, who made it to the semi-finals of last season’s JPL, will be competing in the championships for the first time since 2014. In fact, Harbour View remain the only Jamaican club to have won the championship, having done so in 2006 and 2008.

Williams shared that the championship also presents a huge opportunity for the Jamaican players to secure overseas contracts because scouts from all over the world will be watching the action.

“It also allows our clubs to go toe to toe with their counterparts and demonstrate the strength of the Jamaica Premier League. We are looking forward to it and we are very excited about our participants, and we truly expect them to dominate this club championship,” he said.

“It is more playing time for the players and it is also more global viewership, and that gives the players the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and that opportunity also opens doors for them, and so we see it as a win-win situation, and we are very excited about it,” Williams reasoned.

He explained that both Harbour View and Dunbeholden stand to earn some much-needed funding from Concacaf by virtue of their participation in the championships.

“Their participation in the league is funded by Concacaf and it is also a big opportunity for revenue generation. And so, the clubs and the Concacaf support is very good and strong because it not only gives the club international exposure but also an increase in their revenue,” Williams said.