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Easy, Burrell, easy
No one doubted newly elected Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) president, Horace Burrell would hit the ground running in his effort to resuscitate Jamaica’s flagging football fortunes.
Jamaica’s football, which reached its highest levels under Burrell between 1995 and 2000, including qualifying for the FIFA World Cup Finals in France in 1998, sunk to new depths under Crenston Boxhill and nothing but strong leadership and tough decision making is necessary if we are to get back any semblance of decency.
Burrell’s haste in getting rid of Technical Director Bora Milutinovic and replacing him with Rene Simoes within two days of returning to office is some cause for alarm and hopefully it is not a sign of things to come.
Sporting Edge still believes Bora is the best coach for Jamaica right now and the least the new Burrell administration could have done is seek to work out a deal with him, maybe reducing his hefty salary.
If the JFF’s coffers is as bare as we were told on Tuesday, how come there will be two friendly internationals in the next two weeks? Where will this money come from to host two countries? I hope the new JFF is not digging itself into a deeper financial hole in its rush to return international football to the country.
There is also a lot of celebration with the expected return of Simoes to Jamaica and former FIFA referee Peter Prendergast was heard on one radio sports talk show welcoming back “the little magician from Brazil”. I guess like many others, Peter’s memory is very short, or he chose to ignore the failures under Simoes.
Maybe the qualification to France overshadowed everything, for we seem to have forgotten that Simoes basically walked away from the job after a series of failures, while advising the JFF and the government how best to spend money instead of investing in foreign coaches.
He then went to Trinidad and Iran with very little, if any, success before turning up with the Brazil female Olympic team, then a second division club team. Hardly worthy of the résumé of a coach that took a minnow to the World Cup and won a game.
One gets the feeling however that Simoes’ return is a done deal and all we can do is hope he can recapture the magic he did in his first stint. After all, regardless of how we feel about his abilities as a coach, we have to support the national programme.
Sadly, not a whole lot has changed in the infrastructure of the club system since Rene was last here and he will be faced with the same obstacles as back then. We had heard in 1994 when he arrived that he would be putting in place a blueprint for sustained growth and development.
We were still waiting for that blueprint when he left.
With the qualification for the 2010 World Cup set to start in June, it is hardly likely that there will be time for any holistic overhaul of the Jamaican local football product.
Interesting.
HoraceBurrl
No one doubted newly elected Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) president, Horace Burrell would hit the ground running in his effort to resuscitate Jamaica’s flagging football fortunes.
Jamaica’s football, which reached its highest levels under Burrell between 1995 and 2000, including qualifying for the FIFA World Cup Finals in France in 1998, sunk to new depths under Crenston Boxhill and nothing but strong leadership and tough decision making is necessary if we are to get back any semblance of decency.
Burrell’s haste in getting rid of Technical Director Bora Milutinovic and replacing him with Rene Simoes within two days of returning to office is some cause for alarm and hopefully it is not a sign of things to come.
Sporting Edge still believes Bora is the best coach for Jamaica right now and the least the new Burrell administration could have done is seek to work out a deal with him, maybe reducing his hefty salary.
If the JFF’s coffers is as bare as we were told on Tuesday, how come there will be two friendly internationals in the next two weeks? Where will this money come from to host two countries? I hope the new JFF is not digging itself into a deeper financial hole in its rush to return international football to the country.
There is also a lot of celebration with the expected return of Simoes to Jamaica and former FIFA referee Peter Prendergast was heard on one radio sports talk show welcoming back “the little magician from Brazil”. I guess like many others, Peter’s memory is very short, or he chose to ignore the failures under Simoes.
Maybe the qualification to France overshadowed everything, for we seem to have forgotten that Simoes basically walked away from the job after a series of failures, while advising the JFF and the government how best to spend money instead of investing in foreign coaches.
He then went to Trinidad and Iran with very little, if any, success before turning up with the Brazil female Olympic team, then a second division club team. Hardly worthy of the résumé of a coach that took a minnow to the World Cup and won a game.
One gets the feeling however that Simoes’ return is a done deal and all we can do is hope he can recapture the magic he did in his first stint. After all, regardless of how we feel about his abilities as a coach, we have to support the national programme.
Sadly, not a whole lot has changed in the infrastructure of the club system since Rene was last here and he will be faced with the same obstacles as back then. We had heard in 1994 when he arrived that he would be putting in place a blueprint for sustained growth and development.
We were still waiting for that blueprint when he left.
With the qualification for the 2010 World Cup set to start in June, it is hardly likely that there will be time for any holistic overhaul of the Jamaican local football product.
Interesting.
HoraceBurrl
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