Sport & Entertainment
JAM | Sep 21, 2022

Jamaica’s football development to start with a national philosophy, says Hallgrimsson

Tamoy Ashman

Tamoy Ashman / Our Today

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Heimir Hallgrimsson, newly appointed Reggae Boyz coach.

Newly appointed Reggae Boyz head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson wants to establish a national philosophy on how Jamaica plays football.

Hallgrimsson, who recently signed a four-year contract with the Jamaica Football Federation, noted that Jamaica has never had a clearly defined way and philosophy that drives how the team plays.

He attributes this to the constant changing of coaches.

“If a club or country is constantly changing coaches the philosophy changes with the coaches. I (will) try to use my experience from Iceland and will like to do it here. What we did is implement our ideas. We talk to the players, we talk to the management, adjust our ideas to the Jamaicans and that is the ownership of Jamaica. It’s not the coach that takes the philosophy with him,” he said.

Hallgrimsson has over 30 years coaching experience.

By enacting this philosophy, he hopes that Jamaica will qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup that will be jointly held in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Over the past three years, Jamaica has had more than 100 players, but has still remained unsuccessful at the top level of international football.

Hallgrimsson added that these players often come from different countries with a different style of playing and this can interfere with the dynamic of the team.

“Players of different cultures, they come from different teams, from even different continents, so everybody is used to doing it their way, and professionals like to continue to do it their way.”

“So for me, the first task is to build a working environment so that when players come to the Jamaica national team, this is how we do it. So it’s not like this today and it’s not like that tomorrow and it doesn’t change if you lose a game, this is how we do it,” said Hallgrimsson.

He also noted that the formation of this philosophy will surround the players available.

“You cannot force players to play certain things because I like it. So this is my philosophy and I hope we can do this together.”

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