KINGSTON, Ja­maica – Pres­i­dent of the Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (JFF), Michael Rick­etts said he ful­ly ex­pects the Reg­gae Boyz to beat Cu­ra­cao in their fi­nal CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fi­er on Tues­day and book their spot at the 2026 FI­FA World Cup.

The Reg­gae Boyz cur­rent­ly trail Cu­ra­cao by one point in Group B, and a win against them at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um will take them to their sec­ond-ever World Cup, with their on­ly oth­er ap­pear­ance be­ing in France in 1998.

De­spite the Ja­maicans falling 2-0 to Cu­ra­cao in their open­ing round fix­ture, Rick­etts said he was con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry this time around.

“I am not go­ing to say that we are very con­fi­dent, but we want to do well and we in­tend to do well. We don’t want to be cocky, we still want to be hum­ble and re­served, but we re­al­ly want to do very well for our coun­try.

“We are re­al­ly very hope­ful, be­cause we re­al­ly want to do this for Ja­maica, es­pe­cial­ly giv­ing west­ern Ja­maica some­thing to smile about,” Rick­etts said, ref­er­enc­ing the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, which hit the is­land three weeks ago.

“We have to win this game, and every­body would un­der­stand that by now. All the play­ers, the staff mem­bers and coach­es.

“They are a good team, but man to man, I think we are su­pe­ri­or. We just need to ex­e­cute on the day and once we do this, I am pret­ty sure that we would come out on top,” he added.

Rick­etts point­ed out that even in the de­feat to Cu­ra­cao, Ja­maica dom­i­nat­ed the con­test but just could not fin­ish in front of goal.

“If you look at the game that we lost 2-0 to them in Cu­raçao and com­pare the stats, we took 17 shots com­pared to their sev­en. We got four cor­ners and they got ze­ro, so that gives an in­di­ca­tion of how we played. We nev­er man­aged the fin­ish­ing very well, and I think we were a lit­tle un­for­tu­nate in that area.

“We are try­ing to get to our sec­ond se­nior men’s World Cup and it is go­ing to be his­toric. We want to go out there and give it our best shot be­cause of the so­cial im­pact a vic­to­ry and a World Cup will have on the psy­che of every sin­gle Ja­maican,” Rick­etts said.

CMC