The “Reggae Girlz” of Jamaica are the underdogs of this year’s (2019) Women’s World Cup.
The Jamaican women’s national soccer team debuts on Sunday, June 9 at the tournament in France against a highly-rated team from Brazil.
FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, ranks the Jamaicans the lowest among the 24 teams at the tournament. But don’t try to tell that to any of the players.
“Football is a very funny thing,” says Jamaican midfielder Deneisha “Den-Den” Blackwood. “You can never predict what’s going to happen. And I feel like we are going to be the team to shock everybody in this World Cup.”
Just five years ago, Jamaica didn’t even have a women’s national soccer team. Now they’re the first team from the Caribbean to ever qualify for a Women’s World Cup.
Last week, the Reggae Girlz, as the team calls itself, continued to make history, shattering attendance records in Scotland.
They were in Glasgow to play the Scottish women’s national team in a final warmup match before the month-long FIFA tournament, which started on June 7.
The event destroyed the attendance record for a Scottish national women’s team home game, attracting more than four times the previous record of 4,098 spectators. And the teams didn’t disappoint.
Jamaica went up early on a goal by their star forward, Khadija Shaw, who’s known by her nickname, Bunny.
Scotland, however, rallied — and in the end, won by a score of 3-2.
“It was a really good match,” says 24-year-old Natalie Lawrence, who was in the stands. She describes herself as “half-Jamaican, half-Scottish” and lives in Manchester. She’d heard about Shaw and seen some video highlights of her online — but says it was amazing to see “Bunny” play in person.
“She’s the best football player for Jamaica in a long time,” she says, gushing about the striker. “Shaw’s like ice-cold, slots that ball in. Can go one-on-one like it’s nothing. She knows what she’s doing. She’s absolutely quality.”
But Shaw and her teammates almost didn’t make it to the World Cup — not because they barely squeaked by Panama in the qualifiers but because just a few years ago Jamaica didn’t even have a national women’s soccer team.
The Jamaican Football Federation disbanded the Reggae Girlz after they failed to qualify for the 2015 World Cup in Canada. Then, after they were resurrected, the Federation suspended funding for them again while facing budget shortfalls in 2016.
“We are just happy to be here at this moment,” says Shaw after dinner at an event celebrating the team at a Caribbean restaurant in London last week. “We’ve worked hard for this. I don’t think a lot of people know what we’ve gone through behind the scenes.”
