Coley: Vassell a rare talent

FORMER JAMAICA College (JC) head coach Miguel Coley has praised forward Peter-Lee Vassell as the most impressive player he has ever seen.

Coley was speaking on “Sports Chat”, a sports series based on YouTube on Wednesday. He said that he took notice of Vassell while coaching JC between 2013 and 2017. Vassell was an ISSA/WATA DaCosta Cup player for Cornwall College at that time.

“Peter-Lee Vassell was outstanding for Cornwall College (CC). He’s a player I would have a lot of time for,” he said. “He’s poetic, he glides. When you find a talent like that - in a [Theodore] Whitmore or a Zinedine Zidane - their movements are with ease. They are very deceptive in that they can go left or right. They shoot, they pass, all the different combinations, and with a good attitude, where he plays for the team.

Coley says that although he has won five consecutive ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup and Olivier Shield titles, if Vassell was a JC player at the time, the school would have been even more dominant.

“I’ve never tried to recruit him, but I would always think, if I had a player like Vassell, I could do a lot of damage in the schoolboy football,” he said.

‘He’s poetic, he glides. When you find a talent like that – in a [ Theodore] Whitmore or a Zinedine Zidane – their movements are with ease.’

He also had high praise for CC head coach Dean Weatherly, who he said gave him the most challenge tactically as a schoolboy football coach.

“I liked playing against Dean Weatherly,” Coley said. “You have many coaches that come with a set plan, and they live or die with it because that is how they’re going to play.

“Playing with Dean Weatherly, you have to create two moves. Each time he does something, you react to what he did but make a counter-play as well. I enjoyed playing against him because he would do something and I have to pick my brain on that because they would dominate us.

“Normally, I am very calm on the bench, but with Weatherly, sometimes I’m sweating, and while I would win, my work was cut out for me. Dean Weatherly is a fantastic coach.”