Local Girlz need overseas experience – Busby
Published:Tuesday | August 13, 2024 | 12:12 AMLivingston Scott/Gleaner Writer
Senior women’s national football team head coach Hubert Busby Jr says the large pool of overseas-based professional players currently in the Reggae Girlz squad makes it difficult for local players to get into the senior team.
Over the past two seasons, since the restart of the local women league that had been absent for more than three years, a number of talented players have come through, including the likes of Destiny Powell, Keiba Cowan, Natoya Atkinson, Shaniel Buckley and Tina Seaton. Most of these players have national youth experience and have received college opportunities.
Nevertheless, Busby believes that as talented as these players are they need the experience that a professional environment provides and it is better for these players to get the requisite experience at college or club level overseas so they can be up to par and be able to compete for a place in the senior Reggae Girlz team.
“In the Jamaica Women’s Premier League a lot of players have moved on (overseas) and there are some younger players still there. But they are not quite ready for the senior women’s team.
“The ones who are there, we (coaches) know who they are. They know that we have been monitoring them and that we know all the players in that pool. The chances are out there for them to get what they need to improve,” he said.
He noted that there are more than 50 players in the national senior team pool and that the reality for local players is to go overseas to get the necessary experience.
“A lot of these players will have to go overseas to get what they really want. They need to put themselves in the right environment so they can be pushing for a spot in our team,” he pointed out.
Nevertheless, he said the growing pool of professional players at their disposal continues to help Jamaica to become one of the big teams in the Concacaf region, and that the aim is to have a succession plan that will allow them to qualify for continuous World Cups.
“It’s a very deep pool and it is a very good headache to have, even though there are limits to the (FIFA) windows and we can only pick 23 (players per squad).
“So how we utilise those windows and how we monitor those players is challenging but that is what we need to do, to make every single player know that there is an opportunity for them locally and abroad.
“We will continue to monitor them and make sure that we are utilising every single window to evaluate players as we head into World Cup qualifiers,” he said. “One thing we are really passionate about is getting to the World Cup. We have seen what has happened on the men’s side. So you have to have a true succession plan in place because it is so fragile and competitive at the moment.”