KINGSTON, Ja­maica – Reg­gae Boyz in­ter­im head coach Rudolph Speid has made a bold de­ci­sion to ex­clude sev­er­al of his star play­ers for the team’s up­com­ing FI­FA World Cup play-offs against New Cale­do­nia and DR Con­go.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port by the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er, Speid, who took over last No­vem­ber fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Steve Mc­Claren, has left out six play­ers who were part of the CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, in­clud­ing lead­ing goalscor­er Shamar Nichol­son.

Ja­maica will play New Cale­do­nia on March 26, and if they win, they will face DR Con­go on March 31 for a spot in the 2026 FI­FA World Cup, sched­uled to be held in Cana­da, Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States from June 11 to Ju­ly 19.

While Speid is ex­pect­ed to an­nounce his squad on Fri­day, re­ports sug­gest that Nichol­son, along with Leices­ter City winger Du­juan ‘Whis­per’ Richards, Charl­ton Ath­let­ic for­ward Ka­heim Dixon, Wolver­hamp­ton Wan­der­ers right back Dex­ter Lem­bik­isa, and Mans­field Town mid­field­er Jon Rus­sell are all ex­pect­ed to be omit­ted.

Strik­er Michail An­to­nio is al­so set to be left out de­spite mak­ing his club re­turn in the Qatar Stars League last week.

Re­ports fur­ther sug­gest­ed that the play­ers didn’t meet the se­lec­tion cri­te­ria im­ple­ment­ed by Speid in Jan­u­ary.

It is un­der­stood that Coven­try City star Ephron Ma­son-Clark, Sheffield Unit­ed winger An­dre Brooks and Tot­ten­ham Acad­e­my prospect Tyrese Hall will be the new­com­ers in the squad af­ter re­ceiv­ing their Ja­maican pass­ports.

Twen­ty-six-year-old winger Ma­son-Clark is on the verge of Pre­mier League pro­mo­tion, with his sev­en goals and sev­en as­sists help­ing to lift Coven­try to the top of the Eng­lish Cham­pi­onship ta­ble.

Al­so in the Cham­pi­onship, 22-year-old Brooks cur­rent­ly has five goals and three as­sists for Sheffield Unit­ed, who are cur­rent­ly 15th, while 20-year-old mid­field­er Hall, who has been scout­ed by the Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion for over a year, is cur­rent­ly on loan at Eng­lish League Two club Notts Coun­ty, where he’s reg­is­tered five goals and two as­sists in 28 match­es.

CMC