Newly appointed Reggae Boyz head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson believes his first order of business is to develop a national philosophy on how Jamaican wants to play football.

Armed with nearly 30 years of coaching experience, Hallgrimsson signed a four-year contract with the Jamaica Football Federation and has the mandate to help Jamaica develop its football and to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup that will be jointly held in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Throughout its history, Jamaica has never had a clearly defined philosophy and the way it plays football is largely left up to whichever coach is in charge.

As such, over the past three years, Jamaica has used more than 100 players but has very little to show for it. Hallgrimsson believes that the time has come for a change.

“If a club or country is constantly changing coaches the philosophy changes with the coaches. I (will) try to use my experience from Iceland and will like to do it here. What we did is implement our ideas. We talk to the players, we talk to the management, adjust our ideas to the Jamaicans and that is the ownership of Jamaica. It’s not the coach that takes the philosophy with him,” he said.

“That is the first thing we have to do. Number one, players of different cultures, they come from different teams, from even different continents so everybody is used to doing it their way, and professionals like to continue to do it their way. So for me, the first task is to build a working environment so that when players come to the Jamaica national team, this is how we do it. So it’s not like this today and it’s not like that tomorrow and it doesn’t change if you lose a game, this is how we do it.”

The philosophy then will depend on the players that are available.

“You build your formation and how you play football is based on the players you have,” Hallgrimsson said.

“You cannot force players to play certain things because I like it. So this is my philosophy and I hope we can do this together.”