Harbour View putting their faith in youth
AFTER A poor start to the Jamaica Premier League season, Harbour View’s General Manager Clyde Jureidini believes the key to climbing up the table will be finding the right balance to integrate young players into key roles in the squad.
Harbour View sit close to the bottom of the league, but Jureidini is hopeful that they will be able to turn their luck around and earn a playoff spot come the end of the regular season.
After losing their main talisman Shaquille Bradford, Harbour View will look to their youth players to help fill the gap left behind by the team’s top goalscorer this season.
“We have to be replacing the leading goalscorer who the team had based their performance and attacking prowess around. We’ve had a to-and-fro season so far and we’re trying to balance it out. We’re bringing up young internal talent and improving the performance in spite of everything.”
This will not be the first time Harbour View have had to rely on their youth players, and according to Jureidini, the club has a strong history of nurturing young talents and promoting them to the senior team.
“Harbour View FC is a pioneer of that in Jamaica,” he said. “When we entered the KSAFA Major League when it opened in 1974, we entered with the bulk of our under-16 minor league team who had won in 1972, and then, by 1976, we won that competition. That squad of 16 players had eight of us who were under 19 years old at the time,” Jureidni said. “That’s the basis of Harbour View, that’s the basis of what we’ve been doing with our youth players coming up; and that’s what we have done before and that’s what we’re doing again now.”
Despite needing immediate results, Jureidini believes the young players will need time to adjust to football at the senior level. He explained that most young players will need two or three years to adjust to this level, and that the team will be looking to find that right balance between youth and senior players.
“Players don’t just come up immediately, and usually it’s a two- to three-year process. We don’t realistically think that the players will come in and just start banging in goals right away. It may happen with one or two; we saw it on the weekend with young Kaheim Dixon, and that’s fine. He’s an extraordinary talent, but young players will take time to blend with the team, with the league, with their own personal challenges, and we have to allow them with time.”
When asked about who he expects to be standout performers for the second half of the season, Jureidini listed David Reid, Omar Thompson and Jahshaun Anglin as players he holds in high esteem.