Midfield is key to success, says Coley
ATLANTA, Georgia — Assistant Coach Miguel Coley says while Jamaica will have to maintain a tight defence when they meet the USA in the CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-finals tomorrow, they must also be imposing in midfield.
“The midfield will be key, you have (Michael) Bradley playing there who works between the line as they are very patient and very dangerous, so in midfield we really have to be on top and play a solid game,” he said.
And Coley thinks that his team can win if it plays a disciplined all-round game and does not waste opportunities in front of goal.
“We back ourselves 100 per cent that we can win, all we have to do is to be tactically astute and be very disciplined on the field and capitalise in the areas where the USA are very weak,” he said.
Jamaica’s midfield should be strong as it has been for the most part in the tournament and will be boosted significantly with the likely return of FC Dallas’s Je-Vaughn Watson.
The hard-tackling and tireless Watson, who is expected to rejoin central midfield ally Captain Rodolph Austin for the game, missed the quarter-final match against Haiti on Saturday as he was serving a one-match suspension after picking up two yellow cards in the preliminaries.
Head Coach Winfried Schaefer has repeatedly spoken of the importance of Watson in the engine room of the Jamaican midfield, the man who gets his hands dirty for the cause.
“Watson is so good… it’s like he cannot get tired; he keeps running and running,” the German coach said of the former Sporting Central Academy star.
Jamaica’s midfield has stood up well in the four previous games with Watson, Austin, Jobi McAnuff and Garath McCleary in the main doing duty.
The USA, too, pose a threat, not just with the scheming Bradley, but with hard-nosed Kyle Beckerman, Graham Zusi, Mix Diskerud, Alejandro Bedoya and Guy Corona.
Meanwhile, Coley says that part of the master plan from a technical standpoint has already been achieved, and a win over the 34th-ranked USA would put his Boyz on course of achieving the second objective.
“I think we had a two-year objective, and the first thing was to be Caribbean champions, and to move on from that, to be CONCACAF champions, and here we are now in the semi-finals against the USA,” said the successful Jamaica College coach.
Meanwhile, at a training session yesterday morning at Emory University in Atlanta, Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz looked businesslike in their first training session since arriving here on Sunday night for their semi-final showdown.
Schaefer watched over his players as they were taken through exercise drills by physical trainer Andre Waugh.
The two coaches, Schaefer and Coley, kept a close eye on the proceedings when the championship-chasing Boyz then scrimmaged among themselves and practised shooting at goal.
The session — conducted on a hot Atlanta morning where temperatures reached 93 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity at 45 per cent — is the first of two that the Jamaicans will have before their date with destiny.
They will have their final tune-up in a more intense session at the same venue this morning.
Late call-ups Omar Holness and Sean McFarlane, promoted from the Under-23 squad, had their first full training session since joining the group in Baltimore on Saturday.
Jamaica will face USA in the semi-finals at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta tomorrow at 6:00 pm (5:00 pm Jamaica time), while Mexico and Panama clash in the second game of a double-header at 9:00 pm (8:00 pm Jamaica time).
Both winners will meet in the championship match at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Sunday. The third-place play-off match will be played at the same venue one day earlier.