August 9 – Jamaica’s women’s coach Lorne Donaldson has questioned how the Reggae Girlz will be funded in the future following their second-round departure from the Women’s World Cup.
Jamaica were the surprise package of the tournament, eliminating the heavily fancied Brazilians from the competition, and keeping three clean sheets in their group, but on Tuesday they fell to Colombia 1-0.
Donaldson (pictured) has however cast doubt over what happens next for his team, who arrived in Australia and New Zealand following a crowdfunding campaign to cover some of their own expenses, in a repeat scenario of 2019.
“In 2019, nothing happened,” said Donaldson at a news conference. “Maybe with some help from maybe the government, even though FIFA and the government don’t really mix, we can all come together and try to figure something out.”
But Donaldson did not sound like a man who believed anything would change in the near future. Before the tournament, the mother of midfielder Havana Solaun and the Reggae Girlz Foundation started a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for their training camp, food and staff support.
The team has been disbanded twice in the last 15 years and once again struggled to get funding for the Women’s World Cup – they are the only Caribbean nation (men or women) to have qualified for two World Cups. At no point during the news conference did the manager refer to his own federation, but it was clear he was pointing the finger at his paymasters, the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF).
“Cedella Marley has a program in Jamaica that she’s actually running,” said Donaldson.
“It’s a very good programme for young girls and hopefully now we can get more young ladies involved in the programme. The girls watching this and people are, you know, win or lose, they get something out of it. I hope everybody now in Jamaica can embrace women’s football and just make sure that from primary school all the way up can say, OK, we want to do this.”
Due to a lack of funding, Jamaica were limited to staging a few training camps before the Women’s World Cup, but they did not play any friendly matches. Since 2016, the JFF has been awarded $9,289425 in funding from the FIFA Forward 2.0 with 56% allocated to operational costs. Ahead of the finals, the JFF said that funding came from FIFA as well as Concacaf, but Manchester City player Khadija Shaw siad that the JFF had repeatedly broken their promises of supporting the team.
Donaldson is coming to the end of his contract and was unable to give any clarity over his own future.
“Before the September game – the Olympic qualifier – I don’t think anybody’s going to do anything before that, knowing the way we work in Jamaica. We need to sit down and sort some stuff out,” said Donaldson.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714562659labto1714562659ofdlr1714562659owedi1714562659sni@i1714562659tnuk.1714562659ardni1714562659mas1714562659