GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Guyana’s football technical director Jamal Shabazz is pressing for more quality international friendlies for the national side as they prepare for crucial World Cup qualifiers later his year.
Guyana edged highly rated Cuba in a two-game series last month and Trinidadian Shabazz believes the fixtures served to emphasize that Guyana’s pedigree could only be tested and improved on with outings against quality opposition.
Currently ranked No.5 in the CFU and 132nd in the world, Guyana beat the region’s top-rated Cuba 2-1 and then drew the second match 0-0 to clinch the series.
“We’ve got to continue playing matches like these,” said Shabazz, commenting on his team’s favourable results against the Cubans, who are the highest rated Caribbean team at the moment with a FIFA World Ranking of 88th.
Shabazz pledged to press for more friendly internationals against worthy opponents.
“It’s my job to pressure the federation to get the funding for us to play matches like these, because we can measure where we are now against a team like this. We need to play teams of this quality if we want to round the team into the form that we had two years ago,” Shabazz added.
Guyana impressively racked up a 100 per cent win record during 2006 as they sailed into the Digicel Caribbean Cup Finals.
Based on their group stage performance, they were among the favourites entering the final round in Trinidad and Tobago in January 2007 but faltered and failed to reach the semi-finals, after losing to St Vincent and the Grenadines (0-2) and drawing with Cuba (0-0).
Guyana will enter the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa with a second stage match in June against the winner of the preliminary round fixture between Suriname and Montserrat.
Shabazz wants to ensure that he secures good friendlies in the next three months, leading up to their mid-June World Cup qualifying assignment.
“There’s just no other way, we’ve got to play international matches. We can prastice from now until the cows come home, we can’t work miracles. The only way we can take the team to the next level is to play international warm-up matches,” he said.
