Editorial | Choosing the football coach 

As was widely anticipated, Rudolph Speid has been named to continue as Jamaica’s interim national football coach for the four-team, Unity Cup, to be held in England this month.

Mr Speid is also seen as the front-runner for the job on a permanent basis, although the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) says that he will formally applied for the position, like everyone else.  This is a welcome declaration, but the JFF must go further. It must bring full transparency to the selection process.

The JFF has reportedly already received, presumably unsolicited, applications for the posts, including from two former national players, but the perception that Rudolph Speid is favoured by the JFF and has the best shot at the permanent job, despite limited experience in international football, is largely because of his insider status.

Mr Speid is principal of the Cavaliers Football Club, and, until his national assignment, served as its manager/coach. Regarding his international experience, in 2024 he guided the club to top spot in the CONCACAF Caribbean Cup and qualified for the CONCACAF Champions Cup.  He was also in charge of the national team, known as Reggae Boyz, for the Inter-Continental Playoffs in Mexico, Jamaica’s last-ditch, but unsuccessful, effort to make it to this year’s World Cup after their failure to automatically qualify from a relatively easy group of Caribbean teams.  The early debacle led to the resignation of the coach, Englishman, Steve McClaren, to whom Mr Speid was technical advisor.

LONG-SERVING

Mr Speid was a long-serving director of the JFF and chair of its technical committee, from which he took a leave of absence after his appointment to support Mr McClaren.  Despite Jamaica’s failure in Mexico, Mr Speid was upbeat that the team had improved under his management and he signalled an interest in having the coaching job on a permanent basis, while attempting to be coy about whether he would pursue his ambition.

As we made clear after Mexico, The Gleaner has arrived at no conclusion, and therefore makes no declaration on whether Mr Speid is the right man for the job. What we have absolute certainty about, and insist upon, is that the JFF must handle the recruitment with transparency and clarity.

First, as the Gleaner’s editorial board has posited before, despite how the JFF may manage its affairs, it, like other major sports organisations, oughtn’t to perceive itself as a private institution, accountable only to its constituent associations and world football’s governing body, FIFA.  Jamaicans are heavily invested in the national football team and have been made formal stakeholders in its oversight by the JFF’s acceptance of taxpayers’ money, and other resources, to maintain its operations. Citizens have a right to know how their money is spent, and not just as an accounted exercise represented on a balance sheet.

On the question of clarity, it is important for the JFF to know the mission for which it is recruiting a national coach, or whatever title is to the post. For example, is that person’s job merely to put together a team to win competitions, and hopefully take Jamaica to the 2030 World Cup, by scouting players from the domestic leagues and through a manhunt across the globe for others of Jamaican descent? Or will the chosen person have the broader mandate or mission of establishing for the JFF strategies and structures for the development of players and the sustainability of systems, beyond the requirement of the immediate competition?

MORE THAN PERSONALITY

In other words, this process must involve more than deciding on personality. It must be underpinned by a philosophy, which the JFF must articulate with clarity. And the mission that flows from that philosophy should find its way in the coach’s, or the manager’s, or the technical director’s – whatever the appointee is called – job description and terms of reference. It must also inform the call for applications for the job, which should be openly advertised, an approach increasingly used by national football bodies in their searches for team managers or coaches, or technical directors.

The nomenclature matters, but each carries sometimes seemingly subtle, although substantive distinctions. The JFF must know which of these it wants, whether it is someone whose primary concern is the selection and on-field performance of the team, or whether the job entails the development of a broad strategic vision for national football teams.

Having adopted its philosophy, the decision on who becomes the coach or manager can’t be a pre-ordained, backroom recommendation by the JFF’s technical committee that is rubber-stamped by its directors.