THE TURNout at Sunday's friendly match between the Reggae Boyz and El Salvador shows the need for engagement of the public and the senior national team in international football competition.
It also proves how successful the hosting of such ventures can be if the thing is seriously marketed. And by marketing I'm not only relating to the general practice of doing so by way of advertising in the media and signs (billboards etc.) but also by way of assembling quality Jamaican teams to play these matches.
In this way, the value of entertainment would have been increased and people will feel more encouraged to spend hard-earned cash, if only due to the mere perception that they will get better value for money.
No inspiration
What transpired under the previous Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) administration with Jamaican squads made up of players drawn from clubs all based in Jamaica, or squads with three or four foreign-based players maximum, being drafted for international friendlies, did not do enough to inspire big crowds such as that which numbered more than 20,000 on Sunday, to venture to the stadium in support of the national team.
Even for competitions such as the regional Digicel Caribbean Cup qualifiers in 2006, which also served as qualifiers for CONCACAF's flagship tourna-ment - the Gold Cup, only the grandstand area of the National Stadium was open and it was never filled to capacity for any match.
Two international friendlies - against Chile and Panama - were also held at the National Stadium this year but, on both occasions, the crowd response was poor and the JFF ended up losing vast sums of money. For the Chile game, it lost $6.5 million, for the Digicel Caribbean Cup the loss was $2.5 million, to host a friendly here against Canada in 2006 it also lost $4.6 million and there was even the Under-17 World Cup final round qualifiers, for which the JFF ended up losing $18 million. That is $30 million and counting.
Such losses, it said, forced it to desist from hosting friendly games.
The JFF does not make money from other national teams but the senior Reggae Boyz.
This calls for a greater need to develop strong marketing strategies for this unit.
A big part of the previous administration's stated focus centred on grassroots development, but there appeared to have been some amount of misinterpretation of that very notion, given what transpired.
There seems to have been an over-emphasis on Jamaica, in itself, specifically as it related to players eligible for national team selection.
Professional clubs
Profound, isn't it, that footballers who were born and bred in this country, who played their way through many different age group competitions in schools and clubs and through their own advancement in Jamaica, had earned contracts with professional clubs in North America and Europe, were basically excluded from such selection and participation.
They were simply made to pay the price for being exceptional.
Also, I can't recall a period in modern Jamaica football where there has not been a significant thrust to develop the game at the grassroot level. We have had and still have boys playing organised football in all parishes in Under-12, Under-13, Under-15, Under-16, Under-17, Under-19 and Under-20 for well over 20 years. The Under-19 and Under-20 competitions date even much further if you are looking at the advent of the Olivier Shield (1909), Manning Cup (1914) and daCosta Cup (1950).
The development processes at the clubs are even deeper with kids training at camps from a much earlier age - seven and eight and thereabouts.
It is quite strange, therefore, that such pronouncements about grassroots were allowed to dictate the flow of the football, even after Jamaica had qualified two teams to FIFA's junior World Cup Finals (Under-17 in 1999 and Under-20 in 2001), which contained players borne through early development programmes; and a senior team that also qualified for another World Cup Final with all but five players of Jamaican descent - Deon Burton, Paul Hall, Fitzroy Simpson, Robbie Earle - who were brought on at a late stage - that experienced similar growth. Several other players of Jamaican parentage who never grew here have been included at different stages thereafter, but few with any degree of permanence.
Grassroots development
The federation, under the previous administration, had clearly taken a stance on what it believed to have been grassroots development, which contributed to a host of other complications that affected Jamaica's football and its marketability from a series of poor results and an all-time low world ranking of 103.
The hungry response from both spectators and players at the National Stadium on Sunday proved how strong the desire for the sport and its marketability remain. But it's necessary to keep both engaged in international competition; and to pick the best national senior players available.
audley.boyd@gleanerjm.com
