‘Took it for granted’ – Jamaica star reacts to ‘disappointing’ Steve McClaren exit after World Cup woe

Mason Holgate has said that it’s on Jamaica’s stars to dig themselves out of a hole created by failing to qualify for the World Cup directly.

The Reggae Boyz will need to navigate the play-offs to reach next summer’s tournament after a goalless draw with Curacao last month.

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Jamaica came into their final match in Group B knowing a win over the world’s 82nd-ranked nation would book their World Cup spot.

However, the Caribbean outfit managed just one shot on target and missed four recorded big chances en route to a heartbreaking draw.

Steve McClaren instantly resigned after failing to qualify directly, with Jamaica now needing to go through the lottery of the playoffs.

His side were overwhelming favourites to dominate their CONCACAF qualification group, with the World Cup held in North America.

Three of Jamaica’s usual rivals, the United States, Mexico, and Canada, all qualified directly as tournament hosts, leaving them the highest-ranked nation in their group.

Holgate is also part of a star-studded Reggae Boyz squad which includes his former Everton teammate Demarai Gray, Brentford defenders Ethan Pinnock and Rico Henry, Leicester City’s Bobby De Cordova-Reid, and Aston Villa’s Roma loanee, Leon Bailey.

Holgate, who joined Qatari club Al Gharafa last summer, exclusively told talkSPORT: “It was just massively disappointing.

“Obviously, the nil-nil with Curacao was disappointing, but I think it was more so the fact that we’d even let ourselves get into that position of needing it to come down to the last game.

“If you look on paper, individually of our whole squad and what we’ve accomplished, what we are still accomplishing and the players that we have, we don’t feel like we should have been anywhere near that position with the quality that we had in the team, on the bench, in the whole squad, people who weren’t even getting in the squad.

“The quality that we have as an island is unbelievable.”

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‘No one to blame but ourselves’

Holgate added: “I think a lot of us openly said there’s no one to blame but ourselves for that situation because at the end of the day, we’re all a class of footballers that should be able to go out there and make a difference and an impact. And I think we just didn’t seem to do that.

“I think the Curacao game, you could turn around and say we were unlucky with the nil-nil draw.

“But as I said, we shouldn’t really be in the position that we were in to come down to the last game.

“So we were disappointed with that. And then whilst we’re in the changing room, Steve came in and said that he’s going to step down.

“At the time, there was just so much happening, so much commotion, it was hard to function and to process that.

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Steve McClaren quits as Jamaica head coach

“But it’s obviously disappointing for us that we’ve put him in a position where he’s had to step down because we know how good we are as a squad and a team.

“And we shouldn’t have put him in a position where he needed to step down because at the end of the day, whatever team he put out, whatever squad he called up, was more than good enough to go there automatically.

“Having said that, it’s not over. We know that we’ve got the two teams that we have to play in the playoffs are going to be very difficult, and they’re in the same position as us.

“We believe in our quality, and I still think we need to dig ourselves out of the position that we shouldn’t be in.

“But it’s only down to us that we can do it.”

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Qualifying for the World Cup

Under McClaren, Jamaica finished second in Group B of the CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers with 11 points, one behind Curacao.

The Reggae Boyz posted a record of three wins, two draws and a defeat, with the loss coming against Dick Advocaat’s side in October.

Jamaica have only reached FIFA’s showpiece tournament once – a group stage exit in 1998 after two defeats and a win over Japan.

On the opportunity to end the country’s nearly 10,000-day absence from the World Cup, Holgate added: “It’d be huge.

“I think that’s what was so destroying after the game.

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“We’re not stupid. We know we’re not a Germany or a Spain or something like that, or an England, say, but we know that as a chance goes, we were never really going to get a better chance than that to qualify for a World Cup.

“Obviously, in that region. The best teams are the United States, Mexico and Canada, and that’s where the World Cup is. So that left a big chance for us to go and get one of those three automatic spots.

“And to not take that, it felt like, because originally it felt like maybe we took it for granted, but we felt like we could feel how much it meant to everybody to have that glimmer of hope and that chance.

“We believed that we’d get it done. And obviously we didn’t.

“We had enough experience not to let it happen, but we did.

“So ultimately, we can dig ourselves out of the situation that we’ve put ourselves in now.”