KINGSTON, Ja­maica – Tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of Ja­maica’s Un­der-17 men’s foot­ball team, Wen­dell Down­swell, be­lieves the team can ad­vance out of their group at the 2026 FI­FA World Cup.

The ju­nior Reg­gae Boyz were drawn in Group E along­side Italy, Ivory Coast and Uzbek­istan for the tour­na­ment that takes place in Qatar in No­vem­ber.

Down­swell, who al­so led Ja­maica’s U-17 team to the 2011 World Cup, said he is con­fi­dent the team will per­form well.

“I’m fair­ly sat­is­fied with the zone that we have. I think we have a grand chance of leav­ing this zone.

“This is a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for the young­sters to re­al­ly show their tal­ent on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. This is an ex­cel­lent plat­form for them to be­gin at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, and al­so for the staff it­self and by ex­ten­sion Ja­maica com­pet­ing in an­oth­er one of the [U-17] World Cups, which is of sig­nif­i­cant im­por­tance to us as it re­lates to the zone it­self,” Down­swell told the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er.

“The prepa­ra­tion will be of ut­most im­por­tance- the fact that now we have got­ten the draw­ings as it re­lates to the group that we are in. We have done some work al­ready in terms of prepa­ra­tion and plan­ning; it’s just for us now to fine-tune the prepa­ra­tion it­self, look­ing at the lo­gis­tics as it re­lates to prepa­ra­tion go­ing in.”

CMC