Head Coach Heimir Hallgrimsson says the priority is to beat Guatemala as Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz face them in an international friendly match at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey on Saturday evening.

Hallgrimsson says Jamaica will field a rotated team and that the coaching staff is still focusing on the Concacaf Nations League quarter-final home and away games against Canada starting next week.

Hallgrimsson says it took a while to name the squad for this game as they were trying to pick squads for an Under-20 camp as well and some players were not available.

“We thought it was better to wait with announcing this squad until it was fully, fully ready,” Hallgrimsson said.

He admitted that they did not want to play a friendly game prior to the Canada games but says “probably it was a long time since Jamaica played as important a game as the two Canada games we have in front of us but it was decided that we play against Guatemala so we tried to use this to our benefit, seeing players who are fringe players, players that we have not seen before and we try to focus on domestic players and players playing in the US, so that is the kind of the players we pick for this stage.”

While the 20-man Reggae Boyz team is made up mostly of US-based and local-based players, Hallgrimsson says that there is an opening in the squad for the games against Canada and one player from today’s game could be included.

The squad for the games against Canada will be named on Sunday.

“All games we play we go for the win, we always want to win because that should always be the ultimate goal in a first national team,” Hallgrimsson said.

Jamaica beat Guatemala in their most recent meeting, 1-0 in their Concacaf Gold Cup quarter-final game in Cincinnati, Ohio, in July and Hallgrimsson said he was impressed with them.

The Guatemala team is expected to be strong with 13 players from their Gold Cup squad included in this team.

“Their Coach [Luis] Tena came in at a similar time as us and he had already played 22 matches with the team since he took over,” Hallgrimsson said. “So they have more understanding in their squad because they have been, many times, playing together. So, the individual understanding, the tactical understanding is probably much, much higher in the Guatemala team, that was the opponent that impressed us the most in the Gold Cup.”

Hallgrimsson says the Guatemala team, which he describes as really enthusiastic, hard-working players who are fast and direct, would have an advantage over the Jamaicans, whom he said had not been together for too long.

“A lot of these players are touching base on what we want to do tactical wise, so we give them a lot of information in a short period of time,” Hallgrimsson said. “We want to win, for sure, but we’d also like to see what they can deliver in the areas that we want, tactically, and also as us as team members.”

While Hallgrimsson says a captain has not yet been selected, he is looking for leadership on the field from Demario Phillips, Romario Williams, Javane Brown, Jamoi Topey, Richard King, and goalkeeper Jahmali Waite.

Hallgrimsson says they tried to do the best they could to prepare a team in the short time they had to work.

There are also some new faces in the coaching staff as well.

“This is to keep the staff fresh when it comes to playing Canada,” Hallgrimsson said. “That will be almost two weeks together and by the end of the FIFA window, we play the second leg against Canada and we need everyone fresh. There is an extra five or six days of work and the staff in the camp is working 24/7. We thought to have them for close to three weeks is too much, so we try to give most of them a rest for this camp, so we really appreciate the staff members that jumped into this one and we we think we are doing the correct thing having everyone fresh.”

This evening’s game kicks off at 7 pm.