For­mer T&T FI­FA Un­der-17 World Cup play­er and se­nior na­tion­al team de­fend­er Julius James was ap­point­ed to the coach­ing staff of the David Beck­ham-owned In­ter Mi­a­mi CF Spe­cial Olympics Uni­fied Team on Tues­day.

It was an­nounced by the club in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Spe­cial Olympics, MLS WORKS, and ES­PN that the In­ter Mi­a­mi CF Spe­cial Olympics Uni­fied team will be led by coach­es Daniel Car­taya, Di­rec­tor, OPA Works and a Found­ing mem­ber at Our Pride Acad­e­my, a non-prof­it 501(c)3 school for kids with de­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties Pre-K through to adult, and cur­rent In­ter Mi­a­mi CF Acad­e­my coach and for­mer MLS and James.

Reached for com­ment, James said he was ab­solute­ly ho­n­oured to be named head coach of the In­ter Mi­a­mi CF Spe­cial Olympics Uni­fied Ath­lete Team.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Sports from At­lanta where the team played a match on Wednes­day, James com­ment­ing on his new role with­in the club said they start­ed ac­tu­al­ly two years ago be­fore the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic hit and halt­ed things.

He said, "The Spe­cial Olympics Uni­fied Ath­lete Pro­gram start­ed with In­ter Mi­a­mi start­ed two years and we had games set with oth­er MLS clubs and about 60 ath­letes and Spe­cial Olympians show up for tri­als and we even had in­ter­view with coach­es, but then the pan­dem­ic hit.

"So we were un­able to go for­ward with our plans but At­lanta Unit­ed in­vit­ed us for a game ear­li­er this year and we de­cid­ed that we will just come to­geth­er re­al­ly quick­ly and go for­ward with our plans.

“So every­thing just worked out and aligned re­al­ly per­fect­ly for us to make some­thing grand."

Go­ing for­ward James said the most im­por­tant thing the club wants to do is be part of the com­mu­ni­ty.

“In­ter Mi­a­mi just start­ed three years ago and hav­ing a re­la­tion­ship with the com­mu­ni­ty is very big for us, so the main thing is not on­ly to com­pete and to give a high lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion for the Spe­cial Olympians and Uni­fied ath­letes but the goal is to al­so have a strong com­mu­ni­ty pres­ence.

“Right now there are no plans in terms of Olympics or any­thing like that but we are start­ing to be in con­tact with more teams so that pos­si­bly in the fea­ture a league could take place giv­ing the ath­letes more games, but our main goal is to bring aware­ness and to have every­one un­der­stand that Spe­cial Olympians are like every­body else.”

Be­fore mov­ing to the USA, the Mal­oney-born 37-year-old James who now re­sides in Fort Laud­erdale en­joyed stand­out col­lege ca­reers first on home soil at St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege whom he led to mul­ti­ple Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) North Zone and Na­tion­al In­ter-Col and League crowns fol­low­ing a trans­fer from St James Sec­ondary.

Up­on leav­ing the St An­tho­ny’s “West­moor­ing Tigers”, James earned an ath­let­ic schol­ar­ship to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut where he was a Her­mann Tro­phy can­di­date and Lowe’s Se­nior Class Award fi­nal­ist be­fore be­ing draft­ed ninth over­all by Toron­to FC in 2008.

He then plied his trade with Hous­ton Dy­namo (2009), Min­neso­ta Thun­der (2009), DC Unit­ed (2009-2010), Colum­bus Crew (2011-2012), Car­oli­na Rail­hawks (2013), San An­to­nio Scor­pi­ons (2014-2015), Fort Laud­erdale Strik­ers (2016), Sacra­men­to Re­pub­lic (2017) and end­ing his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer with FC Mo­town in 2018/2019 sea­son.

James, who was a found­ing mem­ber of Can Bou Play Foun­da­tion and an Agri­cul­tur­al & Re­source Eco­nom­ics ma­jor at Uconn, played for one pro­fes­sion­al club in T&T, Cen­tral FC for whom he fea­tured twice in 2017

​James and the rest of the coach­ing staff will be in charge of 11 Spe­cial Olympic ath­letes with in­tel­lec­tu­al and de­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties.

The play­ers signed their con­tracts in Sep­tem­ber along­side Chief Soc­cer Of­fi­cer and Sport­ing Di­rec­tor Chris Hen­der­son and con­duct­ed mul­ti­ple train­ing ses­sions at the In­ter Mi­a­mi CF Train­ing Cen­ter ahead of their in­au­gur­al match against the At­lanta Unit­ed FC Spe­cial Olympics Uni­fied team at Mer­cedes-Benz Sta­di­um.