KINGSTON, JAMAICA - Jamaican soccer fans have spent the weekend discussing the news that Rene Simoes, the Brazilian coach who has taken them to the World Cup finals for the first time, is to quit in October. Simoes announced on Friday that he would stand down when his present four-year contract comes to an end. He said in a news release that he decided to leave after a local newspaper article reported his salary to be U.S.$20,000 per month, easily surpassing what is earned by most business executives in Jamaica. Simoes said the correct figure was even higher U.S.$25,000 with an increase pending after the World Cup but said his conscience would not allow him to accept this if he remained in Jamaica. The article in the Sunday Herald on May 10 criticised Simoes' salary because it so exceeded Jamaica's per capita income of U.S.$1,700 per year.

An enraged and embarrassed Simoes railed against the newspaper, saying his countrymen with the Santos team, who played Jamaica in a friendly on the day the story was published, found his salary to be a source of amusement, given that their coach earns more than U.S.$80,000 per month. Simoes came to Jamaica in 1994 to take charge of the national football programme and to fulfil the country's seemingly impossible dream of qualifying for the 1998 World Cup. In the process he transformed what many outsiders described as a rag-tag team into a respectable unit which, on November 16, 1997, became the first from an English-speaking Caribbean country to qualify for the World Cup finals.

(Reuter)