MI­A­MI, Flori­da – An ear­ly sec­ond half goal from Amari’I Bell en­abled Ja­maica to push past Guatemala 1-0 on Sun­day and book a place in the se­mi-fi­nals of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States.

Af­ter miss­ing out on the fi­nal four two years ago, the Ja­maicans have reached this stage of the tour­na­ment for the fourth time in the last five Gold Cup tour­na­ments and face Con­ca­caf gi­ants Mex­i­co in the se­mi-fi­nals on Wednes­day at Al­le­giant Sta­di­um in the city of Las Ve­gas in the state of Neva­da.

“It’s an amaz­ing feel­ing to get to the se­mi-fi­nal,” Bell said. “It’s some­thing we set out to do, but we don’t want to stop there. We are go­ing to keep on go­ing and go and win the tour­na­ment.”

The Reg­gae Boyz de­fied not on­ly their op­po­nents on the field, but al­so the large and loud fol­low­ing of Guatemalan fans in TQL Sta­di­um in Cincin­nati, Ohio, to keep the match lev­el at 0-0 at half-time.

Goal­keep­er An­dre Blake, the Boyz cap­tain, was forced to make an ear­ly save when Ru­bio Ru­bin pounced on a turnover and fired a shot in the sev­enth minute.

Ja­maica, a tal­ent­ed bunch of play­ers, in­clud­ing sev­er­al that make a liv­ing play­ing in Eng­lish foot­ball, start­ed to take over mid­way in­to the half and be­gan to con­trol the tem­po, pen­e­trat­ing deep in­to the Guatemalan de­fence.

The Ja­maican for­wards start­ed fir­ing sev­er­al prob­ing ef­forts to­ward Guatemala goal­keep­er Nicholas Ha­gen, in­clud­ing an ef­fort from West Ham Unit­ed strik­er, Michail An­to­nio, whose a shot went wide in the 37th minute.

The ef­forts of the Reg­gae Boyz fi­nal­ly wore down the Guatemalans ear­ly in the sec­ond half, and a sur­gi­cal pass from De­marai Gray in­to Bell, who plays for re­cent­ly pro­mot­ed Eng­lish Pre­mier League club Lu­ton Town, capped a great col­lec­tive build-up and the fin­ish at the near post gave them the lead.

Both sides had their chances in the re­main­ing time to thrill the fans, but nei­ther could find the back of the nets.

Blake was forced in­to a save in the 57th minute when Ru­bin slid a pass over to Car­los Mejia, whose right-foot­ed shot got swal­lowed up.

As­ton Vil­la winger Leon Bai­ley brought out a save from Ha­gen mid­way through the half be­fore Blake made one of the most im­por­tant blocks of his ca­reer when he soared to his left and palmed away a head­er from Ale­jan­dro Galin­do off a cross from Mejia in the 79th minute.

There was al­so a free kick that was curled in and took a de­flec­tion off a Ja­maican head, forc­ing Blake to go low to make a stop, but the Ja­maican de­fence held firm for the rest of the way.

Hosts Unit­ed States faced neigh­bours Cana­da in the last quar­ter-fi­nal late on Sun­day and emerged the win­nere via a penal­ty shootout, 3-2af­ter the match end­ed tied at end of reg­u­la­tion and added-on time.

The Amer­i­cans pro­gressed to meet Pana­ma in the se­mi-fi­nal.

CMC