Football

Damage limitation by the JFF

by
yardie
June 9, 2013

Captain Horace Burrell, president of the Jamaica Football Federation reacted swiftly

to a possible fall-out from Tuesday night’s loss by Jamaica to Mexico in the World Cup qualifier inside the National Stadium, by calling a press conference to try to assuage the public before tonight’s ‘eliminator’ against the USA.

Burrell would have noticed the number of empty seats to the north and south of the bleachers as well as the fact that the grandstand was not packed to capacity. The fact that Jamaica lost to Mexico would have cause a number of people to rethink going to tonight’s game. However, in an attempt to fill the seats a resolute Burrell has assured the nation that he is still confident that the nation can qualify for Brazil 2014.

“In a relay a runner never passes the baton backwards he passes it forward and therefore I’m not looking backward I’m looking forward and I’m looking forward to getting a great result, I’m looking forward to win the game against the USA come tomorrow (today) and let us pop the champagne after,” the confident leader said.

Interestingly, head coach Theodore ‘Tappa’ Whitmore had said he was more or less pleased with the performance of his charges after the Mexico loss and thought they had just had a bit of bad luck. In a post match interview, Whitmore said: “Well basically I think we had a decent first half…I think the second half, when we came out we were a bit flat and we conceded and then we tried to chase the game and we didn’t get back into the groove.”

Whitmore has now indicated however, that there will be changes in personnel for tonight’s key encounter: “I can guarantee there will be changes, but I don’t want to give out any because you know the Americans are here so we have to be careful but, there will be changes going into the game as I said before we need a positive result and that positive result can only be three points, so it must be changes going into the game.”