Ja­mal Shabazz is the new St Lu­cia, foot­ball coach. He fol­lows in the foot­steps of his com­pa­tri­ot Rus­sell Lat­apy who gave up coach­ing in T&T to pick up a more lu­cra­tive of­fer in Bar­ba­dos re­cent­ly.

Shabazz was coach of the T&T's Women's teams, but he stepped down to re­turn to his club team Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed in the T&T Pro League. Yes­ter­day how­ev­er word spread that Shabazz, a for­mer Guyana Na­tion­al team coach, had signed on the dot­ted line on a two-year deal.

Con­tact­ed Shabazz con­firmed the ap­point­ment, say­ing he is ex­cit­ed to take up the new chal­lenge, giv­en his coach­ing stints with Guyana and T&T.

"It's a new project with the St Lu­cia peo­ple and cer­tain­ly some­thing I look for­ward to," Shabazz said. He added, "As a de­vout Mus­lim this new op­por­tu­ni­ty is even more sig­nif­i­cant for me, as it comes dur­ing the holy month of Ra­madan." Shabazz is sched­uled to be­gin work on the na­tion­al team lat­er this week.

Ac­cord­ing to Shabazz, "Since Ca­lyp­son­ian Stal­in sang the song Caribbean Man, I have al­ways shared that view, and foot­ball is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to ex­press my­self in that way ide­o­log­i­cal­ly."

Since ac­cept­ing the coach­ing job, Shabazz has been warm­ing up with the coun­try's Elite Women's Pro­gramme. He said he has been out of touch with coach­ing so he de­cid­ed to get his feet wet once again be­fore go­ing to St Lu­cia.

He re­places Fran­cis “Panko” Mc Don­ald who man­aged the St Lu­cian team, dur­ing the Wind­ward Is­lands Se­nior Foot­ball Tour­na­ment and the ear­ly stages of the Na­tion’s League.

Pres­i­dent of the St Lu­cia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Lyn­don Coop­er made the an­nounce­ment of Shabazz's ap­point­ment and said the T&T coach will bring with him a wealth of tech­ni­cal ex­pe­ri­ence. Coop­er mean­while is set to be giv­en a new man­date by League af­fil­i­ates on the is­land and that he plans to take foot­ball to high­er heights.