REGGAE Boyz head coach Theodore Whitmore has resigned from his position with immediate effect. Sources indicate that a letter of resignation was tendered sometime Friday.

This is a major blow to the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) who is preparing a squad to compete in the inaugural Nations League that begins in September. The national team, the Reggae Boyz, also have international matches scheduled in the coming weeks.

Whitmore has been in negotiations with the JFF over his salary package in recent weeks and reports of a proposed meeting between the coach and the federation that was supposed to have been convened recently did not occur because Whitmore did not show up.

Another meeting was reportedly set up but with the resignation, that meeting is now not likely to happen.

Sources said that the JFF had planned to make another offer to the head coach that would be an improvement on his existing pay package that reports suggested was well below what was being paid to the previous Winfried Schaefer and which was reported to be in the region of US$45 000 a month. Whitmore was reportedly being paid about US$3 000 monthly.

Last month, JFF president Michael Ricketts revealed that he had planned to meet with Sports Minister Olivia Grange to discuss whether the government would assist in covering the salary of the head coach that led Jamaica to the finals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2017.

“I have a meeting with the minister next week. I will speak with the minister to see what we can get from the subvention from the SDF and then we can talk with Whitmore (about a new deal),” said Ricketts in an interview with local newspaper, The Gleaner, recently.

“The media is making it look like we (the JFF) and Whitmore are at war and that is not the case. We have no problem at all with Mr Whitmore. He is a staff member of the JFF who gets a salary every month. Whitmore and I have never had a quarrel.”

He also assured that Whitmore would be offered an improved package.

“Whitmore will get an increase. That is the whole idea behind the meeting with the minister. I have had two meetings with Whitmore, and the discussions were not about salary. There is no time limit to it. The two meetings were about football talk. We spoke about the development of local coaches,” Ricketts said.

However, that meeting between the Ricketts and Grange did not materialise as the minister fell ill and was hospitalised.

Calls to Ricketts, JFF General Secretary Dalton Wint, or team manager Roy Simpson, went unanswered.

Whitmore was in his second stint as head coach of the Reggae Boyz. He was first appointed head coach from 2009 to 2013. He took over the position again in 2016 replacing German head coach Winfried Schaefer. (Sportsmax)