Wayne Dover has his eyes set on becoming Head Coach of the Golden Jaguars
In spite of an underwhelming run in their CONCACAF Nations League 2024/ 2025 League A debut, Guyana’s senior men’s national football team, the Golden Jaguars, managed to end the 2024 international window on a high by sealing a spot in the CONCACAF Gold Cup Preliminaries next March.
That will not be the only major assignment for the local team however, since they will need to lace up their boots in June for two World Cup 2026 qualifier matches. Interim Head Coach Wayne Dover is already looking at aspects of the team that need strengthening ahead of 2025, which he discussed during a post- match press conference after Guyana defeated Barbados on Tuesday night.
Dover divulged, “We will start to prepare our minds towards analysing this group, to see where we need to strengthen up and try to build a team that could go out and play collectively and win games. Definitely, one of the things we want to stamp out from this whole sojourn with this group is poor attitude, and that we’ll declare a zero-tolerance against.”
He explained, “As we push forward, we hope to build something that is lasting.”
While discussing some improvements already made this season, the stand-in head Coach also touched on some of the lessons they learnt from their League A campaign.
“We all know that this group of players been together for a while, and we’ve seen some great football being played over the last 2-3 years with this particular group. You know, when we start the preparation for this campaign here, we spent a lot more time working on our transitional play out of possession. Once we out of possession, we want to collapse and be organized, and we try to win the ball back; and as we do that, we want to play very quick out, because we know we have very quick players up front,” Dover explained.
He went on to elucidate, “Like Barbados said, they learnt a lesson playing against us, and we learnt a lesson playing against the League A teams. So, we know the areas that we have to work on. Definitely, fitness is a key element that has to be improved on, and little bit more quality in the squad. The squad need a little but more depth. We won’t shy away from that, cause to compete at the level in A League, you have to have good quality players and fit players.”
Foremost of the things that would need to be ironed out for the Golden Jaguars in 2025 is their leadership. Dover, who has stood in the position for the last two games, admitted a desire to wear the Head Coach cap on a permanent basis once again.
“Every coach is aspiring to be head coach of the senior national team, and I have that aspiration to become the head coach once again; and I do hope these performances weigh heavily on the administration minds,” he divulged.
“You know, we don’t know, maybe they decide it’s time to give Dover a chance and back him full time. So, we wait and see what comes out of that,” he responded to inquiries about his aspirations.
Exact dates for Guyana’s home and away Gold Cup Preliminary matches against Guatemala have not yet been announced, but the Golden Jaguars would also face Nicaragua and Montserrat, on June 6 and 10 respectively, for the World Cup qualifiers.
Thus far in the World Cup 2026 qualifiers, the Golden Jaguars have enjoyed a 3-1 victory over Belize, but have suffered a 2-0 loss to Panama earlier this year.
