Jeremie Piette Portmore United Jamaican Premier League

Each game you play is going to be different, so knowing how to adapt to different playing styles is important. In Jamaica the style is very rough defensively and the offensively it’s dribble. So for me playing in Jamaica for the 3 months was good, because it taught be a whole different style then in North or South America. Knowing when to adapt is part of the battle, so there will be games you play when nothing needs to be pretty. Just be aggressive and play safe, when other times you will have to be more creative.

In 2003 I [Jeremie Piette] signed with Portmore United who at the time were the Jamaican Premier League Champions and the Caribbean Champions. This meant we were then involved in the CONCACAF Club Champions League. 4 clubs represented Mexico, 3 clubs represented Central America, 2 clubs represented MLS and 1 club represented the Caribbean.

The three months I played in Jamaica most of the games were Jamaican Premier League games, while a few were CONCACAF. This photo below was a match in Kingston playing against Arnett Gardens in front of the biggest crowd I played at there, which was 20,000 loud fans. Great atmosphere! I tried to intimidate people with my moody look.

We traveled across the island of Jamaica from Kingston to play against Montego Bay, who was one of the weaker clubs in the league. They played very rough though which was a surprise because my club was from Kingston, while this club was a vacation spot club in my mind.

This player in the red was a forward who I was marking most of the match. He had a bullet wound on his cheek and he talked a lot of trash like “me a kick you in your face.” So I made sure to keep him roughed up a bit, so that I could reverse the psychology on him. I didn’t say anything back to him. My plan was to play rough and look mad so that I would intimidate him, or at least let him know I wasn’t intimidated, even though I kind of was LOL. That scar from the bullet led me to believe this guy was tough.