‘More rewards lead to pressure’

Former national assistant women’s football team coach Charles Edwards says that changes to the Concacaf Women’s Championship have emphasised how critical it is for Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz to be adequately prepared for the upcoming qualifiers.

Concacaf announced changes to the Concacaf Women’s Championship, which serves as the qualifying tournament for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. In addition to deciding the World Cup representatives from the region, the tournament will also act as a qualifier for the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024.

Jamaica will compete in the qualifiers in November, and Edwards says that securing international friendly matches and training camps is now more crucial than ever if they want to compete in two of the major international women’s football tournaments.

“If these serve as both for the World Cup and the Olympics, you wouldn’t have a second or a third chance,” Edwards told The Gleaner. “We have to get it right from early out. We have to make sure that we get all the camps, training programmes, get all the players in and get everything right from day one and shoot for it.”

The Reggae Girlz will know their opponents for the first round of the qualifiers when the draw takes place tomorrow at 2 p.m. Jamaica time.

Thirty teams will be drawn into six groups of five, where the group winners will join world champions the United States and Canada in the 2022 Women’s Championship. Four teams will gain qualification to the 2023 World Cup, but only the tournament winner will automatically advance to the Paris Games. The runner-up and third-place winner will contest a playoff in 2023 to determine the final Olympic berth from the region.

Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) general secretary Dalton Wint said recently that they were close to confirming an opponent for the September FIFA international window, with talks starting with another federation for another friendly in October.

Edwards says that there will now be pressure on the JFF, but that there is an opportunity to expand the recruitment to get the right mix of players that can target both tournaments.

PRESSING GAS

“Now is an opportunity to look at some of the local-based players, US-based players, the United Kingdom-based players,” he said. “In a sense, it is a good opportunity for us, and in another sense, it [will force us to] really and truly get our foot to the metal, pressing that gas as quickly as possible so that we can take advantage of the situation.”

Additionally, Concacaf announced that it will have a Women’s Gold Cup tournament starting in 2023. The JFF says that with the changes to the Women’s Championship and the 2023 Gold Cup tournament and qualifiers, regional teams would have competed in a minimum of 195 official matches within this cycle (2021-2024). This represents a 118 per cent increase in comparison to the previous cycle.

Concacaf president Victor Montagliani said that the new structure represents the commitment to providing more opportunities for high-quality international games for the region.

“This is a seismic development for our women’s national team competitions and will transform the women’s game in Concacaf,” he said. “This new ecosystem wholeheartedly delivers on that and the inclusion of an inaugural Concacaf Women’s Gold Cup as a central part. It is a truly exciting step in our journey to further elevate women’s football.”