Dear Editor,

The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) is keeping Head Coach Steve McLaren to lead the Reggae Boyz to the 2026 World Cup.

Before coming to Jamaica, McLaren, who will be 65 years old in July 2026, served English Premier League (EPL) club Manchester United, first as assistant manager and then technical director.

Previous to that he served as England manager and managed other EPL teams.

The entire Jamaica seems to have erroneously believed that since 1998, when we qualified for the World Cup in France, the fast-approaching 2026 tournament in our backyard would have been the easiest to qualify for, with the big teams — United States, Canada, and Mexico — gaining automatic qualification as hosts.

However, Jamaica’s performance in the 2025 Gold Cup was despicable at best against 106th-ranked Guatemala and 33rd-ranked Panama. In fact, the only country that the Boyz were able to eke out a slim 2-1 victory against was Guadeloupe — an appendage of France that is not even a FIFA-ranked country. Guadeloupe is ranked 15th by Concacaf.

Who could have thought that with our contingent of English-based professionals our destruction would have been so decisive.

McLaren should have been fired, but instead his services have been retained, and it has even been rumoured that Rudolph Speid, the coach of Cavalier FC and chairman of the JFF Technical Committee, will become part of the coaching staff as assistant to McLaren.

If that rumour proves to be factual, how could Michael Ricketts, the president of JFF and mentee of the trailblazing, historic president the late Captain Horace Burrell sign off on it?

The JFF needs to appoint Miguel Coley, the most qualified, most travelled, and most experienced Jamaican coach there is to lead the country to its second world tournament in 28 years.

Coley is currently the reserve team head coach of Umm Salal FC. Incidentally, this club from oil-rich Qatar is currently interested in signing Montego Bay FC striker and national representative Shaniel Thomas. Procrastination in acquiring Coley shows that the present administration does not take the beautiful game as seriously as it should.

If World Cup coach and African Nations Cup champion Coach Winifred Schafer could have chosen Coley to be his assistant while Coley — the most successful coach in over a century of schoolboy football — was still coaching Jamaica College, why are our football leaders so devoid of vision?

Jah B

adjob25@yahoo.com