Although qualifying for the 2026 FIFA World Cup is the Jamaica Football Federation’s (JFF) primary objective, President Michael Ricketts says he wants the Reggae Boyz to win the Concacaf Gold Cup to further boost local football.

The national senior men’s team are recovering from Monday night’s game against Guatemala at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Los Angeles and are set to travel to San Diego for their second group game against Guadeloupe on Friday. They end their group campaign against Panama next Tuesday with only the top two advancing to the quarter-finals.

Jamaica have failed to the win the title in their previous 13 attempts, coming close in 2015 and 2017 when they lost in the finals to Mexico and USA, respectively.

The ongoing tournament is three months before the start of the final round of World Cup Qualifying with Steve McClaren’s men touted as heavy favourites to make it to the global showpiece.

While Ricketts’ eyes are focused on qualifying for next year’s tournament, he told the Jamaica Observer that he wants the team to win their first-ever Gold Cup title.

“It’s going to be tough [because] you really have really strong teams,” he said. “We play Guadeloupe and our last game is Panama with whom we’ve always had difficulty. From there, you qualify for the last eight and hopefully we’ll get into the semis and we’ll take it from there.

“We really want to win the Gold Cup [because] we’ve never done that before. Damion Lowe and I had a discussion and he said it’s his fifth Gold Cup and he really wants to win this one.”

Ricketts also wants a successful Gold Cup campaign so the JFF can gain much needed funds.

“I mean it’s US$4 million to win the Gold Cup — that will help us in preparing for the World Cup qualifiers. We did a budget off the top of our heads, [JFF directors] Rudolph Speid and Bruce Gaynor and myself, we’re looking at maybe $600,000 or $700,000 for these games coming up.

Ricketts says a Gold Cup triumph and, more importantly, qualification to next summer’s World Cup will significantly improve the fortunes of football on the island.

“Having done well from a fiscal governance standpoint, it’s time to move on to other aspects of the sport,” he said. “We need to pay a lot of attention to our development programmes. We must now look to win global titles [like the Gold Cup], we must look to qualify for World Cup tournaments and this will need a lot of financial support.

“So once we start earning more from global qualification then the sky’s the limit because we’ll be in a position to fund our grassroots programmes, fund our development programmes and our youth programmes hence it’s part of the preparation process of going into senior men’s and women’s global tournaments. So it’s of very important value that we earn money from the qualification of the men’s World Cup and of course at the Gold Cup.”

Following the conclusion of the Gold Cup on July 6, the Reggae Boyz will turn their attention to the final round of World Cup Qualifiers in September. The top-ranked Jamaicans will take on Curacao, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bermuda, with the group winner automatically advancing to the World Cup.

In this 2019 file photo, Concacaf President Victor Montagliani (left) poses with the Gold Cup at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel with JFF President Michael Ricketts (right) and Senator Pearnel Charles Jr. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)