KINGSTON–Ja­maica has dropped all-time lead­ing goal scor­er Lu­ton Shel­ton ahead of two im­por­tant home games in Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion sched­uled for next week.Shel­ton, who has scored 35 goals in 73 ap­pear­ances in na­tion­al colours, was not named in a 26-man squad for a ten-day train­ing camp in the Ba­hamas.

The camp was cut short­ly af­ter a warm-up game against Ba­hamas sched­uled for Fri­day was can­celled."Lu­ton Shel­ton was a de­ci­sion by the coach to drop him," said Al­fre­do Montes­so, Ja­maica men's se­nior team as­sis­tant coach."We have four strik­ers in the team, and that is enough."We have Ryan John­son, Dar­ren Mat­tocks, Theo Robin­son and Jer­maine Beck­ford."

Since its re­turn on Sun­day the team has held a train­ing ses­sion with on­ly nine play­ers at the Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Train­ing Cen­tre at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.Some of the over­seas play­ers who were in The Ba­hamas re­turned to their clubs for var­i­ous rea­sons and are ex­pect­ed in Ja­maica from Wednes­day with the full squad ex­pect­ed to be avail­able on Fri­day.

Ja­maica tack­les Con­ca­caf gi­ants Mex­i­co next Tues­day be­fore tak­ing on the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca next week Fri­day and Hon­duras in an away game on June 11. (CMC)