Cale­do­nia AIA's coach Ja­maal Shabazz could come up against the So­ca War­riors if he ac­cepts a pro­pos­al from the Guyana Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion to re­turn as its na­tion­al coach. "The Guyana coach job is Shabazz's for the tak­ing," said Aubrey Shang­hai Ma­jor, Op­er­a­tions Sec­re­tary of the GFF. "Guyana foot­ball needs Ja­maal Shabazz as he is the on­ly non- Guyanese coach who has a clear un­der­stand­ing of our cul­ture and has a pulse for what is need­ed," stat­ed Ma­jor who jour­neyed to T&T to meet with Shabazz ear­li­er this week. "The play­ers love him, the Guyanese peo­ple love him, we are go­ing to make every ef­fort to get him here." Shabazz was tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of Guyana's foot­ball from 2005 to 2008 and dur­ing that time he took them from ob­scu­ri­ty to the their high­est FI­FA rank­ings.

Un­der Shabazz, Guyana re­ceived the FI­FA award for the biggest up­ward mover in the rank­ings in 2006.

"Shabazz is more than a coach to Guyana's foot­ball; he is a broth­er and a friend the coun­try loves him and we see him as a Guyanese," said Ma­jor. "You all have all kind of big time for­eign coach­es so T&T does not need Shabazz, ex­plained Ma­jor. Ma­jor, a co-pro­mot­er of the pop­u­lar Kashif and Shang­hai In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball Tour­na­ment in Guyana ex­plained, Shabazz can be a huge as­set to our pro­gramme. "It is hard to ex­plain the con­nec­tion that he has with the foot­ball of Guyana but every­one in Guyana be­lieves he is the best per­son to take our game for­ward at the mo­ment. The GFF in­vit­ed Shabazz to ob­serve and even sit on the bench with the Guyana team for their match yes­ter­day against In­dia with a hope that he will ac­cept their of­fer and start work­ing over the week­end with the Guyana team.

Ma­jor says Shabazz is hes­i­tant to ac­cept the of­fer be­cause Guyana and T&T are in the same group for the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers which starts on Sep­tem­ber 2. Bar­ba­dos and Bermu­da are al­so in the team sec­ond round Caribbean Foot­ball Union group from which the win­ner will ad­vance to a third round group in­volv­ing Mex­i­co, Cos­ta Ri­ca and pos­si­bly El Sal­vador. "I think he is very scep­ti­cal of how he is viewed by the T&T pub­lic be­cause he loves his coun­try. "He told us he has to speak to the Min­is­ter of Sports Anil Roberts and a cou­ple oth­er peo­ple first," re­vealed Ma­jor.