| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Karl |
Posted - Jun 04 2006 : 09:14:32 AM
Final word - How did the Boyz become Toyz?
published: Sunday | June 4, 2006
Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - Sport
UTTERLY PATHETIC. Sorry, but there's just no other way to describe the shambles once known as the Reggae Boyz.
Yesterday at Old Trafford, England completed six months of 'friendly' humiliations with a 6-0 drubbing of a team that should now be called the Reggae Toyz as they were little more than playthings for a keen, well-drilled outfit with legitimate World Cup claims.
Over the past six months the Jamaican football team, once the island's sporting pride and joy, has played four friendly matches against Australia, the United States, Ghana and England, and lost three and drawn one.
The combined aggregate score is 16-2 which is not bad or even terrible, it's just utterly pathetic.
When Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) president Crenston Boxhill usurped Captain Horace Burrell for the game's premier post here he, among other things, promised a movement towards youth.
If this young brigade is the best Jamaica has to offer, we are in huge trouble.
COLLECTIVELY A MESS
It's not that the players are not talented. Individually they may be better than the original Boyz who strode on to football's greatest stage at the 1998 Cup in France, but collectively they are a mess and national coach Wendell Downswell must take the blame for a side which shows little cohesion, system and remarkably porous defence.
What the '98ers lacked in style they made up for in substance under the astute if somewhat idiosyncratic tutelage of that little Brazilian, Rene Simoes.
Of course, there's absolutely no problem with a move towards youth; it's highly laudable and prudent, but what the powers that be in football seem to have lost track of is that the senior men's football team is the flagship of the sport and its performances, fair or not, reflect on the entire programme and have an extreme trickle-down effect.
Therefore, it is of vital importance that this football rot be stopped as soon as possible or heads should roll.
Downswell has been a loyal and trusty servant, but he is not getting results. Well, he is, it's just that they are very bad.
And note, how many of the 'small' teams like Trinidad and Tobago, Togo, Ivory Coast and Angola made it to the World Cup with home-grown coaches? Umm, none.
With JFF elections due next year, Boxhill's head is also on the block and Burrell is carrying the axe.
KING WITHOUT AN EMPIRE
The baker is a king without an empire. He holds CONCACAF and FIFA posts but has no voice in his homeland. However, he has insinuated himself into the local scene through sponsorship of many parish leagues.
While this current JFF regime has apparently done well at solidifying the national league and balancing the books, when it comes vote time the confederations are going to ask: what have you done for me lately?
Meanwhile, Burrell can ask: what have you done to the Boyz?
Boxhill, Downswell and Co. better not write this all off as valuable experience for a young squad, but instead recognise it for the disaster it is and find ways to remedy it quickly ... or there could be a different Captain at the helm next year.
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