Reid off to Brazil

General secretary of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), Horace Reid, left the island for Brazil yesterday.

Reid will hold discussions with Traffic Sports administrators and other relevant entities with a view to finalising plans for the national senior team to stage a training camp in Brazil as the last stage of its preparations for the Gold Cup.

In outlining its plans for 2011, the federation had indicated that pre-tournament camps were going to be staged in Brazil for the national Under-17s, national Under-20s and the senior team. The first two have already taken place and the general secretary will be finalising plans for the senior team. This camp will be focused mainly around games. In this regard, the general secretary will focus his mission around the pre-planning of three to four international 'B' games to be staged in various cities in Brazil.

Limited opportunities

There are very limited opportunities to get the national team together before the CONCACAF Gold Cup finals in the USA in June, due to the absence of FIFA dates after the March schedule and before the commencement of the tournament, and therefore, this training camp represents a critical element to the preparation of the national team heading into competition. Jamaica's Reggae Boyz are drawn in Group B of the Gold Cup alongside Honduras, Guatemala and Grenada (finalists in the Digicel Caribbean Cup last December).

The general secretary will also be holding discussions towards getting technical advice/assistance on field development and maintenance, especially as it relates to the JFF technical centre at the UWI.

Also travelling yesterday was national Under-17 player Alvas Powell, who will join the Under-20 training camp.

Members of the the Under-20 squad were due to play their first practice game at 8 a.m. (Jamaica time) yesterday against players from the Pao de Acucar FC Academy. Pao de Acucar is a Second Division club in Brazil.