WITH many Jamaicans still feeling the disappointment of not automatically qualifying for next summer’s FIFA World Cup, Reggae Boyz defender Mason Holgate says the players have only themselves to blame.

The national senior men’s team has been forced into a last-chance situation in March’s inter-confederation play-offs, after finishing behind Curacao in the final round of Concacaf World Cup Qualifying.

Jamaica finished on 11 points after failing to win three of their six group games, including the frustrating 0-0 final score with World Cup-bound Curacao at the National Stadium last month.

Despite being the heavy favourites heading into qualifying, Holgate, who has 10 caps for the Reggae Boyz, believes the team massively underperformed.

“If you look on paper — individually of our whole squad and what we’ve accomplished, what we are still accomplishing, and the players that we have — we don’t feel like we should have been anywhere near that position,” he told TalkSport. “I think a lot of us openly said there’s no one to blame but ourselves for that situation because, at the end of the day, we’re all a class of footballers that should be able to go out there and make a difference and an impact. And I think we just didn’t seem to do that.”

He added, “We know that, as a chance goes, we were never really going to get a better chance than that to qualify for a World Cup. The best teams are the United States, Mexico and Canada — and that’s where the World Cup is — so that left a big chance for us to go and get one of those three automatic spots. Originally it felt like maybe we took it for granted but we felt like we could feel how much it meant to everybody to have that glimmer of hope and that chance. We believed that we’d get it done — and obviously we didn’t.”

Less than an hour after the team’s draw with Curacao, Steve McClaren resigned as head coach, ending his disappointing 16-month stint.

Despite his departure, Holgate says the players are equally to blame for missing out on qualification.

“Whilst we’re in the changing room Steve came in and said that he’s going to step down. At the time there was just so much happening, so much commotion, it was hard to function and to process that,” said Holgate.

“But it’s obviously disappointing for us that we’ve put him in a position where he’s had to step down because we know how good we are as a squad and a team, and we shouldn’t have put him in a position where he needed to step down. Because at the end of the day, whatever team he put out, whatever squad he called up, was more than good enough to go there automatically.”

Under Interim Head Coach Rudolph Speid and Assistant Miguel Coley, Jamaica will need to get by Oceania’s New Caledonia and Africa’s DR Congo or Nigeria in March to book their spot at the World Cup where they will join Portgual, Colombia and Uzbekistan.

Holgate says he’s confident the team will make up for the previous mishap.

“It’s not over. We know that we’ve got the two teams that we have to play in the play-offs [who] are going to be very difficult, and they’re in the same position as us. We believe in our quality, and I still think we need to dig ourselves out of the position that we shouldn’t be in.”

From left: Jamaica players Greg Leigh, Demarai Gray, Bobby Reid and Tafari Chambers react to the 0-0 result against Curacao in the World Cup qualifying match at the National Stadium on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 . The result meant Jamaica failed to qualify automatically for the 2026 World Cup.

Jamaica’s Mason Holgate (left) tries to shield the ball from Andre Raymond of Trinidad and Tobago during the Concacaf World Cup qualifier at Hasely Crawford Stadium on November 13, 2025. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)