Carl Brown ... it's going to be tough, much, much tougher than we saw in the 1998 campaign. - File

KINGSTON (CMC):

CARL BROWN, the man who acted as Brazilian Rene Simoes' assistant during the 1998 World Cup campaign, believes Jamaica's chance of qualifying for the 2010 event in South Africa will be tougher.

Jamaica qualified for the 1998 World Cup Finals along with Mexico and the United States but, according to Brown, Costa Rica, who made it to the last World Cup, Guatemala and Honduras, all missing in France, are on their way back.

"It's going to be tougher," said Brown, a former technical director of Jamaica's Reggae Boyz, on the HITZ 92 FM sports programme on Monday night. "Guatemala are coming back. This Guatemala team a couple weeks back beat a Mexican team. So, with Honduras and Costa Rica, it's going to be tough, much, much tougher than we saw in the 1998 campaign."

No substitute

Asked if the fact that a lot of Jamaicans are playing profes-sionally in Europe wouldn't make things easier, Brown said there was no substitute for what the Reggae Boyz achieved nine years ago.

"For every year between 1995 and before we left for the World Cup, we played 50-plus games every year," he said. "That was magic! I don't think we will be able to do that this time around. That, to me, is probably the biggest disappointment now that we will be faced with."

Brown said the fact that some of the players play in Europe could be good and bad.

"Now we will be having nine, 10 or 12 players coming from Europe, so we will now talk about jetlag, when we talk about tired players coming into Kingston to play a game on a Sunday or a Wednesday, it's not going to be easy, but it's possible," he said.

In a desperate bid to qualify, Horace Burrell, president of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), fired former technical director Bora Milutinovic of Serbia less than four days after he returned to the helm of the country's football.

And less than one month in office, he announced the return of Simoes, who Brown believes is the best man for the job because he knows the Jamaican culture.

"He has done it and clearly knows how to do it," Brown said.

'Totally different' task

The former Jamaica technical director also believes the JFF president would have an easier job to seek support as most of the business people know and respect Simoes, but Brown still laments the toughness of the campaign.

"I read a letter that Simoes wrote and I think he recognised that there is a tough task ahead also," Brown said. "It's good that he recognised that it's going to be totally different."

According to Brown, another of the challenges ahead is with the Jamaica-based players and their clubs, something which he believes Simoes is also aware of ahead of his return.

"Even in the letter he mentioned the support of the clubs, because that, too, has changed," he said.

"The whole scenario there has changed. We could take all the players and move them out of the league for an entire month. It's going to be difficult to ask the club to do that now."

Brown said this is because the clubs are now paying the players.