🇯🇲 The busiest coach in the Caribbean prepares for W Champions Cup, Caribbean Cup challenges
Leading Arnett Gardens & advising Frazsiers Whip, Xavier Gilbert hopes to introduce himself to the region this fall.
It’s tough to catch up with Xavier Gilbert.
Today he’s in San Jose, Costa Rica preparing to help Jamaican women’s champion Frazsiers Whip in their first-ever W Champions Cup match. A few weeks back he was in Curacao where he led men’s team Arnett Gardens to a win in the CFU Caribbean Shield, meaning he’ll need to be back in Jamaica quickly before his team opens Caribbean Cup play against Mount Pleasant.
Meanwhile, Frazsiers Whip still has trips to Monterrey and New York on their calendar, in a W Champions Cup group that in addition to Alajuelense also includes Tigres, Rayadas and Gotham FC.
He also works in “Schoolgirl Football” though his Excelsior team sewed up the title months ago.
There’s plenty of soccer, but not much rest.
In fact, just a few months ago, he took a back seat with Frazsiers Whip to focus on his other duties and currently is traveling with the club as an adviser - though he knows the players well after guiding them to the 2023 Premier League title.
“I started with this (Frazsiers Whip) unit before I picked up the Arnett Gardens job, so because we qualified for this tournament I’m here to provide technical assistance and tactical assistance to the club,” he tells me from San Jose. “They’re very inexperienced competing at this level, and that’s where my experience comes in.”
The club appreciates the help. While a powerhouse in the local league, regularly putting up gaudy scores and throttling opponents by double-digits, everyone is ready for Frazsiers Whip to deal with a learning curve as it begins to play against the region’s best.
“We are one of the small fish in the big pond and are just going to give it our best, be as disciplined and as organized as we can and see if we can pick up one or two goals,” he said. “We’re going to come up under a lot of pressure.”
The Caribbean squad already is without a half-dozen players who returned to the United States, where they play for college teams.
That element of the unknown is one thing they have working in their favor. “Honestly, we’ve looked, dug deep, to get video of them and it’s been really difficult. It’s tough to find a statistic or anything about them, but I think they’re a team you have to respect,” Alajuelense manager Wílmer López said Monday.
More players will leave after the match against Alajuelense, setting the team to be even more shorthanded just as the competition gets tougher.
But that’s the point of the club, Gilbert says: Getting girls on the radar of colleges in the U.S. He hopes more and more players are spotted through the advent of the Champions Cup - whether it leads to more players in the U.S. university system or standouts getting looks from pro teams.
“We’re using this platform for them,” Gilbert said. “For me, that’s a massive success, that they make strides toward picking up a contract. That will only be good for the club itself and Jamaica’s football in the future.”
The next in line is 17-year-old Destiny Powell, who Gilbert believes will be a future star, but the fact that it will be on a teenager with no international experience to push Frazsiers Whip against the reigning NWSL and Liga MX Femenil champions shows the rocky path they’ll need to navigate.
“There’s a lot of talent on the island, and the opportunity for them to showcase their talent is lacking,” Gilbert said. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to participate in this competition. It’s good for Frazsiers Whip, but it’s good for Jamaica as well.”
Gilbert would love to be charting out the same type of path with Arnett Gardens in a few months since it would mean he qualified the Kingston club for the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup.
Already, the Jungalistas have knockout experience, having to go the Caribbean Shield route as the third-place finisher in the Jamaica Premier League.
Some insiders said handing the reins of Arnett Gardens to Gilbert was a risk. He’d had decades of experience, beginning to work as a coach in 1999 and getting involved with the women’s national team as early as 2005.
Despite balancing a busy calendar, Gilbert has proven he knows ball - whether it be men, women, boys or girls kicking it - with Arnett Gardens winning the Caribbean Shield to secure its Caribbean Cup place. The top two teams from each five-team group advance to the four-team knockout stage where both finalists and the third-place squad move into the CCC.
“Looking ahead, this competition now is going to get tougher,” Gilbert said. “Just like life at any stage, the further you go up, the higher you go, the more difficult it becomes. We are anticipating tough challenges in the games ahead.”
Of course, Gilbert is used to taking on these types of challenges - and he craves even more.
After Lorne Donaldson’s exit as women’s national team manager, Gilbert moved over a chair and served as the interim for a pair of games. While he’s known and respected in Jamaican coaching circles, though, his goal is to one day get an opportunity to move abroad.
Former Jamaica men’s assistant Miguel Coley and a few other tacticians have gone from the island to coaching in other countries, but Gilbert is waiting for his shot, even if he feels Jamaican soccer is growing on a technical level.
“I must applaud the federation, Concacaf and FIFA because they’re stressing coaching education. That has played a big part. Coaches are more qualified and can coach what they know,” he said. “We’re still some way behind, but we’re getting there.
“We’re definitely going to see better players. We see that players are being taught the right things.”
For himself, there is still more to be learned - and more obstacles to overcome. Gilbert says he likes to play a possession-oriented style of soccer but always must be ready to modify.
“Sometimes the atmosphere, the environment, the surface, doesn't allow you to do exactly what you'd like to do, and you just have to make the adjustment and adapt according to what is really happening in front of you on the game day,” he said. “That's really my philosophy, to be honest.”
Top managers on the world scene rarely need to reconsider their style of play based on how the pitch plays that day, but those are the types of challenges Gilbert has learned to be ready to deal with.
Those and making sure he’s got his calendar straight. It isn’t easy being the busiest coach in the Caribbean.