Sport

Rolling with the punches

By GORDON WILLIAMS, Contributor

Honduras' technical director Bora Milutinovic (left) sharing a joke with Jamaica Football Federation boss Crenston Boxhill (centre) and Carl Brown at the JFF headquarters in New Kingston yesterday. - Junior Dowie

THE WARNING BOOMED across the field, crackling loud enough to cause many watching Jamaica play Canada in a pre-Olympic practice game - players, spectators and even the referee - to turn their heads to an area near the Young Reggae Boyz's bench.

"Now is not the time to retaliate!" technical director Carl Brown ordered a Jamaican defender who had rushed menacingly forward, ready to scuffle with an opponent guilty of a hard foul against his teammate.

As Brown emerged hastily from a shaded area, marching with long, heavy strides that took him almost on to the playing field in Sunrise, Florida, no one misread his message: The Young Boyz, already a goal down and battling the blazing sun, fatigue and the physical Canadians, must keep their composure, regardless of the level of adversity.

That hard lesson, Brown says, is one he has had to learn himself in football over the years. Even as he lines up Jamaica's senior team for another friendly against Honduras today, following solid recent performances by the Reggae Boyz against Uruguay and world champions Brazil, Brown is fully aware that the right time to answer his harshest critics ­ to "retaliate" ­ is not yet at hand. That comes in a couple months when Jamaica opens its World Cup 2006 qualifying campaign against Haiti.

True test

"The true test will be the qualifiers in June," Brown explained. "Regardless of what happens (in the friendlies), if we don't get the desired results it will all be for nothing."

He does not believe that is a totally fair yardstick to judge any technical director, given the multiple tasks involved in developing Jamaica's football. But rising from the harsh realities of Kingston to lead Jamaica's national football teams, Brown understands the public's impatient way of measuring success. He doesn't blame them, especially after Jamaicans have been spoiled by the country's fairytale run to the 1998 World Cup in France. Yet it's hard to see Jamaica coming away empty-handed like 2002, not with the talent currently at its disposal, which in Brown's view is better than any available before, or at least over the most recent campaigns.

"I believe clearly that it is," he said. "If you look at player for player we could see the current crop of players is clearly the best set of players that we have had the opportunity to choose from."

Still, what was supposed to be a good enough rags-to-riches tale to make any local son rest easy has not been that way for Brown. Not all the time. He has been 'under the gun' from day one.

Rugged style

As a player, Brown's rugged style did not make him a hero to many local football purists. And when he was first chosen to coach the national team, some observers scratched their heads in amazement. If Carl Brown in his prime was not a cerebral player, they argued, then what could he possibly add to a national programme desperate for advanced technical and tactical guidance?

So even after marked success, including Jamaica's rise to the top of Caribbean football by winning the Shell Cup in 1991, Brown, despite being named "head coach", was eased into the background by the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) and replaced by a succession of Brazilian technical directors. First came the highly successful Rene Simoes, who rallied a nation's passion and took the Reggae Boyz to France '98 but then he was gone, replaced by Sebastiao Lazaroni, who departed so quickly after, some Jamaicans still have trouble recalling if he was here at all. Clovis de Oliveira then stepped in, but he was fired after Jamaica failed to repeat its '98 World Cup success by qualifying in 2002.

During all this, Brown waited and watched. Some football insiders say he was frustrated and humiliated, sucked into an almost invisible role. Others argued that he should have quit the programme right then, just to keep his pride. At times Brown thought so too. Word circulated that at least one Brazilian did not want Brown around at all, and that the local man's job was only preserved by higher political intervention. Publicly, Brown said he learned from all three Brazilians, but when asked in late 2002 which one was the best, Brown's quick answer spoke volumes.

"You got the feeling that (Lazaroni) was the sort of coach that would really allow you to work as part of an organisation and a programme," he said. "I really was sorry that he didn't spend more time here."

Foreign coach

When Brown was first handed the job of technical director, following de Oliveira's departure, it came with a weighty bag of uncertainty marked "designate", a tag neither Simoes, Lazaroni nor de Oliveira were asked to carry. The JFF, strapped for cash, could not hire the high profile foreign coach it so desperately wanted. So today Brown is standing virtually alone, separated from key elements of his football past, but still haunted by the "ghosts" of their tenure. Gone are the Brazilians and their mixed record of success.

Also gone is Captain Horace Burrell, who as JFF president had a huge impact on Jamaica's football and who eventually hired Brown as technical director although their relationship was never mistaken for anything beyond cordial. Burrell attached, then later removed, the interim tag to Brown's title, but made no secret that he would have preferred someone with a non-Jamaican passport for the job.

Gone too is Peter Cargill, Brown's trusted assistant, fired a few weeks ago after the Under-23 team failed to make it to the 2004 Olympics. If nothing else reflected Brown's own shaky perch atop Jamaica's football pedestal, Cargill's dismissal certainly did. The public, after witnessing the dramatic crash of an Olympic team which was called Jamaica's best prepared ever by the coaches, demanded someone's head. Cargill's was served up, and Brown's seemed next on the block.

But also gone ­ long before Cargill ­ sources close to Brown say, is the Carl Brown of old, who they claim would have met his adversities with the same aggression once associated with his playing style. Brown says he has gained strength from Christianity, which has now given him a calmer outlook. And he is more comfortable than ever in his role as technical director, despite the howling calls for his departure that still linger in some quarters.

In the lobby of the Hilton hotel at Sunrise in mid-January Brown breaks into a smile when asked about his future. He fully understands that if at the end of qualifying competition Jamaica does not make it to Germany 2006 then surely he too will be gone ­ maybe even sooner if the Reggae Boyz do not jump out to a bright start to the campaign. By Brown's own admission, it matters little to the public that Jamaica's football programme is moving in the right direction, with a greater focus on youth. Or that the Reggae Boyz's put on a strong, confident showing before losing 1-0 to Brazil - superstars Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Cafu and goalscorer Roberto Carlos included.

Or that those same Brazilians, inside football sources said, have tipped Jamaica among the three automatic qualifiers from CONCACAF, alongside the United States and Mexico, for the 2006 finals. Nor will the critics be swayed by the Reggae Boyz' dominant show in beating a very good Uruguay team 2-0 in February, or that Uruguay's star Diego Forlan admitted that he never knew the Reggae Boyz were that tough. The pressure for Brown to keep his job is unrelenting.

JFF regime

"It has always existed and I know it will not go away until people get the results that they want," he said with a matter-of-fact shrug.

In the meantime, Brown finds positives elsewhere, like the maturation of his squad, most of the key members who are full-time professionals overseas, and more important, the public show of support players like Onandi Lowe gave him prior to the match against Uruguay.

"That is the greatest thing for any coach to have," Brown said a couple days after the game. "That is the reason I could sleep so well (the night before the game)."

Other developments have brought comfort as well. Brown is now working under a new JFF regime led by Crenston Boxhill, who ousted Burrell in an election held in November. Brown said he has been given no guarantees by Boxhill other than the one he needs most ­ that he will be judged solely on his performance. That, he said, may not have been the case before.

"I personally feel so much more a part of football (in Jamaica) now," Brown explained about working with Boxhill's team. "I'm allowed to look about the technical part of Jamaica's football. I'm involved in the organisation of (friendly) games, the choosing of teams that we play. Before it never, ever happened. That has made me a lot more comfortable as a technical director. I feel that I'm playing a part and playing a role. I feel that I'm getting an opportunity to work now. And if I fail it's because I'm just not able, not because I wasn't afforded the opportunity. I feel a lot more comfortable now, with the present administration, as opposed to the last administration."

Brown also admits feeling "a lot more secure in the job" since Burrell left and is far more confident now that his professional fate rests with someone other than the captain.

Judge me on performance

"I've said it to the present president that I don't want for him to judge me by any other way than by my work as a coach," Brown said, "and if he feels that I need to get fired because I'm not able to manage, then go ahead and feel free to do it. I feel that if I'm fired by this president that I could live a lot more comfortable, (knowing) that he would have judged me by my performance more than just wanting to get rid of me. This I lingered with and went around with for a long, long time with the last president...I'm not asking for any sort of compromise from the present president. I want for him to just judge me on straight, up front performance."

One night in the 1970s, as no-nonsense referee "Bulla" John Richards headed home from the National Stadium after earlier giving Brown, then playing for his beloved Boys' Town, a red card for a typically rough tackle, some boys asked Richards why he had sent Brown off.

"Carl should have known better," was his reply.

Many years have passed on, and so has "Bulla John", but it seems his response may have struck a chord: Brown knows better than to personally attack his critics. Instead he plans, when the time is right, to "retaliate" with his performance.

- Gordon Williams is a journalist based in Miami.