With three of its five remaining games at home, where it has not been scored upon in seven qualifiers, Jamaica would appear to have a shot of reaching the World Cup finals for the first time and becoming the first Caribbean nation to qualify since Haiti in 1974. Unfortunately, controversy continues to dog the Reggae Boyz, who last spring were involved in a number of publicized incidents in friendlies with Bolivia and Mexican club Toros Neza, and suffered an embarrassing 6-0 loss to Mexico. During that game, striker Onandi Lowe walked off the field after refusing to move back to sweeper and was later kicked off the national team program. More recently, FIFA threatened to shut down Kingston’s National Stadium if the Jamaican Football Federation did not improve the field before the next two qualifiers Sept. 7 and Sept. 14 against Canada and El Salvador, respectively. Internal problems surfaced again when veteran striker Walter Boyd blasted Jamaica’s Brazilian head coach, Rene Simoes, in a Jamaican newspaper for trying to be God. Speaking from England, where he has been training with First Division club West Bromwich, Boyd told The Gleaner: “Now that I’m here it has really opened my eyes to many things and I’m glad I came. I’m sorry I never did this a long time ago because many things which happened would not have happened. “Things like people trying to push you around like you are a nobody or you don’t know anything, people who want to be God in your life, like Rene Simoes, who once you don’t jump when he says so, then you hear you don’t have any discipline.” Simoes is a born-again Christian who is known to be a disciplinarian. Boyd, who was already suspended once for a month this year, has been dropped until he apologizes to Simoes. “I was coming under a lot of pressure,” added Boyd, who starred in the A-League for the Colorado Foxes, “so this has really given me back my confidence because here you don’t have one man with that kind of power where if you don’t agree with him he can easily destroy your reputation and everything that you do, all the work that you’ve put in to achieve a goal in your life.” Boyd has come under criticism for failing to score in a nine-month period that preceded the first suspension. Jamaica scored just two goals in its first five games in the Hexagonal, both by University of Rhode Island star Andrew Williams. Simoes may have found a partner for Williams. Newcomer Paul Hall of English First Division club Portsmouth scored twice in a 6-1 win over Caribbean rival Trinidad & Tobago in a friendly played Aug. 31 in Kingston.