Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz maintained their perfect start in their World Cup campaign with an uninspiring 1-0 win over the British Virgin Islands and advanced to the third round of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying on Saturday (June 7).

A Warner Brown strike in the 17th minute propelled Jamaica to a maximum nine points from three games, having previously beaten the Dominican Republic 1-0 and Dominica 3-2.

Jamaica and Guatemala are joint atop Group E with three wins, but Guatemala, which beat the Dominican Republic 4-2 on Friday, sits at the summit with a better goal difference than Jamaica.

Both Jamaica and Guatemala will clash on Tuesday inside the National Stadium in what could be a group decider.

With the United States, Mexico and Canada qualifying for the 2026 World Cup as joint hosts, three other teams will join the North American giants directly, while the fourth and fifth best teams will enter a playoff tournament with other confederations.

With the top three-ranked CONCACAF teams not in the qualifiers, it seemed Jamaica would have an easy run to the World Cup, the first in 27 years since they last played at the World Cup in 1998.

But the performances have not been good, as evidenced by the display against the 207th-ranked country in the world, the British Virgin Islands.

Head coach Steve McClaren said he knows the team must step up, but right now, they just need to continue winning.

“We’ve got to win the game and we’ve got to find a way to win and we will win 1-0,” McClaren pointed out.

“But we know inside the dressing room that we can be better and we need to be better next week against Guatemala and with the Gold Cup coming up,” he added.

He continued: “We’ve got to be better than we were today, in terms of, I would say, attitude. But maybe we came here with a little bit of complacency and that showed in our slow start”.

“There are no easy games in the Caribbean. We know that. We knew that against St Vincent, and we know that again today. The key thing was in Saint Vincent, we got the draw, and here we got the win. We have to learn from this because it’s also learning from me,” he added.

“We have to move on quickly because Guatemala will be a totally different proposition, and we need to be better if we’re to win that one,” McClaren pointed out.