The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) has announced that football’s world governing body FIFA has lifted financial restrictions imposed on Jamaica since 2020.

JFF president Michael Ricketts was pleased to announce the “great news” that the FIFA audit committee, based on reports coming from the recent audit that they have now been officially removed from restricted funding.

“This is welcome news and we are just absolutely delighted and it was certainly a job very well done,” said Ricketts. “I must use this opportunity to express my absolute regard to, first and foremost, our accounting department headed by Miss Lewis and of course, the other staff members and probably most importantly, our Gen Sec would have masterminded and would have supervised the whole process.”

Ricketts continued: “To the FIFA personnel who worked very closely with us and I know sometimes that we felt frustrated and I’m pretty certain that they would have gotten that feeling as well”.

Ironically, in 2020, the JFF made a similar announcement that the 2019 restriction was lifted after a thorough review of the financial management and governance of the federation.

The then JFF General Secretary Dalton Wint explained that the FIFA review process uncovered several issues of concern, including the situation in which funds from their FIFA account were being transferred to another account and the accounting system needed upgrading which they did.

Ricketts explained that he had to get to the root of the problems from the horse’s mouth hence they knew exactly what to do and not to do to satisfy FIFA.

But now further confirmation of the removal of the restriction came from Christoph Suppiger, head of MA (Member Associations) Finance Services at FIFA, who confirmed via a virtual press conference Wednesday.

“The Jamaican Football Federation has been under restricted funding since 2020. So now we are in 2025, and finally, we could share this good news and this is based on the achievement that has been reached, on the improvement that has been done by the Jamaican Football Federation over these past years,” said Suppiger. “So, as part of the FIFA forward regulations, each year, FIFA-appointed auditors are doing some agreed-upon procedure checks on how member associations are spending the FIFA funds, so this applies for all our member associations.”

Suppiger is responsible for developing and implementing financial governance policies and procedures to support member associations. He has been involved in the creation of the Financial Governance Guide, a key instrument to support member associations in improving their financial management. 

The JFF receives US$1m (J$156m) from FIFA yearly to assist the running of the organisation.

Over the decades, the JFF has struggled to provide proper funding for the various teams, which results in players’ strike action that often embarrasses the organisation.

The payment dispute resulted in several senior players declining to represent the country on several occasions although this is not unique to Jamaica.