Assistant coach of Jamaica’s Under-17 football team is oozing with confidence that they will qualify for the FIFA World Cup having been paired with El Salvador, St Lucia and the Cayman Islands.

Jamaica in preparation for the Concacaf qualifiers set to kick off in February 2025 in Guatemala, will travel to Mexico for three International Friendlies in January.

The competition is slated to run from January 6 through to January 11 in Mexico and will involve the Mexican U17 squad as well as other invited national teams from Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala and Panama.

“The fundamental aim of this camp was to mimic what the schedule would be like in Guatemala. We would have gotten in three games and a couple of training sessions in between,” Reynolds explained.

Jamaica will look to capitalize on the expanded format of the FIFA Men’s Under-17 World Cup which will see an increase from 24 to 48 teams with eight spots from CONCACAF.

The winner of each group will advance to the FIFA U-17 World Cup, bringing the total number of qualifiers to eight and Vassell remains optimistic.

“We are very confident. I think we believe in the abilities of this group, a very talented group. We just need to continue to work hard over the next couple of weeks and having accessed the group that we are in, we not taking anything for granted,” said Reynolds, fresh from leading Kingston College to the Manning Cup and Olivier Shield titles.

“We figured that all three games will be challenging and that how we will be approaching it. But I think it’s a very good opportunity for us and once we put our mind to it and work hard we should be successful,” he added.

The team finished their local camp recently and Reynolds believes the team need to be more consistent in different phases of the game.

“We are making so strides and clearly we need to work on our consistency in possession, out of possession and improve on our individual performances which is coming together quite nicely,” said Reynolds.

Jamaica’s Under-17s have qualified for two FIFA World Cups in 1999 and 2011.