-says Shabazz
No one what knows yet what will be the composition of the Golden Jaguars football team which will compete in Group `B’ matches of the Digicel Caribbean Cup football tournament starting tomorrow at the National Stadium at Providence.
What is known is that the team will be missing a number of key players in overseas-based Shawn `Bubbly’ Beveney and the Newton brothers Howard and Jake.
The team will also be without Gregory Jackie Chan Richardson and Randolph Jerome.
Stabroek Sports understands that the cost of getting the overseas-based players to Guyana might be the main reason for their absence while Jerome, who is in the USA, has been issued a ticket but has not yet shown up.
Richardson has opted to give this tournament a miss after recovering from injury.
Yet despite all that Head Coach of the Golden Jaguars Jamaal Shabazz made a bold statement yesterday backing the home team for the two first-round encounters this weekend.
“In football one and one is not always [equal to] two, he said”
“I say this because although we have less overseas-based players than when we lost to Suriname in the World Cup qualifying match I am not worried.
“We have less of those players but we may end up with a better team,” he added.
Shabazz said that though they will face a Suriname team that caused them back-to-back defeats in the World Cup qualifiers, on Sunday, he was optimistic that this group of players would stick to the game plan and come through for their nation.
Shabazz added that the technical staff had made a decision to include new faces in the squad and that move he said was a positive step towards developing the future of football in the country.
“We have a lot of new players like Kevin Beaton from Linden, Glenovan Edmonds from Kwakwani, Chris Comacho from Santos [football club] and Colin Nelson from Western Tigers who are some of the players that we have brought in to train with us,” he said.
Shabazz said that he refuses to dwell on the shortcomings of the team in terms of not having most of their overseas-based players.
“My mother told me that whenever you don’t get want you want you have to use what you have and that is what we plan to do, whether we are lightly armed or heavily equipped,” he said.
Shabazz said that the technical staff was trying its utmost to integrate the young faces in the squad but because of the limited time, it was difficult.
He, however, declared:“I am confident that if this tournament serves its purpose, it will secure Guyana’s future in football.”
Meanwhile captain of the Guyana under-19 football team Andrew Murray jnr., was not present at the any of the team’s practice sessions.
Asked about Murray’s absence Shabazz said: “Andrew Murray seems to be love-struck at the moment, and cannot be found anywhere close to a football field.”
“We really wanted to give Murray a chance with the team this time but we have tried to contact him on many occasions and we could not reach him,” Shabazz added.
General Manager of the Golden Jaguars team, Aubrey Hudson said that the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) would explore the options of investing in the players that they feel will be useful to the team, if they progress to the next round.
According to Shabazz, one of the hurdles that the team will have to overcome is the lack of time that they have had together and said one way to rectify this problem was to have them play as a collective unit during practice as well as interact extensively off the field.
He also said that the enthusiasm, camaraderie and morale of the team so far were good.
