Schäefer promises to build from home
Jamaica football head coach Winfried Schäefer has promised that home-raised players will lead the charge for the qualification to the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Schaefer, who has agreed in principle to a four-year contract with the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), said looking to the future will mean carefully building his unit around a base of players bred on local soil.
“The last [campaign] we had too many overseas players in our squad. I don’t why.
“We have to work here first with our local players and after we look at [other] players. Only the best players from overseas [should be brought in],” he said during a recent Jamaica Observer Sports Club at the company’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters.
The German, who coached Cameroon to the African Cup of Nations title in 2002 and, riding on a high, guided the Africans to the final of the FIFA Confederations Cup the following year, was speaking to the number of overseas-bred players who took part in Jamaica’s failed Brazil 2014 campaign.
He argued that having a local core will allow him to better prepare for the upcoming Caribbean Football Union Championship.
The 64-year-old, who initially joined the Reggae Boyz last August for four months, taking over from Theodore Whitmore during the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, said: “The national team without a good base is not a good national team. Good players can come from home.
“Team building… I like it. We need goalkeeper. Very good player here, very good player there and you need a leader.
“We need players from England, one maybe two or three.”
Jamaica are scheduled to meet Caribbean rivals Barbados on March 2, and then Grenada three days later in a couple of away fixtures.
The Boyz will then go up against European team Switzerland in Lucerne on May 30. Another World Cup-bound European nation, France, is set to host the Jamaicans in Lille on June 8.