AS A people, we have been taught to believe in magic but it's not fair for so many of us to expect the presence of Serbian coach Velibor 'Bora' Milutinovic to immediately guarantee fairytale endings for our national teams at all the various levels.

Back in February, Bora's choice to attend the Lunar Cup in Hong Kong, a tournament which Jamaica later won, and not be present at the Under-20 World Cup qualifiers in Mexico - yet another campaign we failed to advance from - was a source of great debate.

The issue again came to the fore this weekend when the Under-17 team fell to rivals Trinidad and Tobago at the National Stadium.

The questions are: Should the technical director have been on the bench on both these occasions advising the teams? What difference would it have made? And just what exactly is his role in developing our national programme?

The Jamaican government and private sector have shelled out an exorbitant amount to bring Bora to our shores and I agree that he certainly needs to earn his salary.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

However, it is just unrealistic to expect that he will be able to focus on leading our national football teams at so many levels of competition and, as a result, he does not need to be on every single bench.

While he may oversee the development of all the teams offering technical advice, on the day it is the coaches who need to take responsibility for their various teams.

Developing our local coaches will, in the long run, be a major part, or perhaps even one of the most important parts, of developing a solid national football programme.

They need to be given the experience and we cannot be afraid to let them fail as a necessary part of the learning curve.

Secondly, I do not believe that the technical director would make such a big difference on the day.

Sure, he has a wealth of experience and know-how but the fact is that developing a solid team is a process and not a magical decision here or there on a given day.

WEAKNESS IN COAChING

Let's face the facts, the teams that advanced to the various World Cups over Jamaica were just better prepared and there is no substitute for that.

A sore thumb for our nation and our region overall has been the weakness of our coaching.

This has seen our youngsters, while having an abundance of talent, deficient in their understanding of the game and also in terms of their basic technical abilities.

Recently, our Under-17 World Cup squad had a good chance to progress but were outshone in terms of their technical abilities and basic know-how when it came to putting the ball into the back of the net.

Those sort of flaws come down to being poorly coached, not on the day but in their development to that point.

After taking the teams to the final rounds only to be replaced by our overseas technical director on the day is not only detrimental to their development but undermines all the hard work the coaches have put in to get the team to that point.