WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Un­able to take the coun­try's Women foot­ballers fur­ther, Na­tion­al Women's coach Ja­maal Shabazz has re­signed as head of the Women's pro­gramme which in­cludes an un­der-17, 20 and the se­nior teams.

His res­ig­na­tion comes 13 months af­ter he re­placed Ital­ian Car­oli­na Morace and her staff at the helm of the lo­cal women’s pro­gramme. The se­nior foot­ballers are prepar­ing for the World Cup qual­i­fiers.

In a let­ter ad­dressed to gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Justin Lat­apy-George yes­ter­day, Shabazz said he was prepar­ing for a dif­fer­ent role. Shabazz said, "Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of all the fac­tors sur­round­ing what is re­quired for this team to go for­ward, it is in the best in­ter­est of the team and the coun­try, that I step aside and al­low for some­one who can bring more to the ta­ble at this point."

He added, "A ma­jor part of my life has been giv­en to de­vel­op­ing the women’s game as a coach. Now I think Al­lah has a dif­fer­ent role for me to play in the de­vel­op­ment of the game lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. I will re­main a staunch sup­port­er of this team in par­tic­u­lar and women’s foot­ball in gen­er­al."

Shabazz's un­der-20 team just missed out on ad­vanc­ing out of the group stage at a Con­ca­caf tour­na­ment at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va last year while his se­nior women won a hot­ly con­test­ed Caribbean Foot­ball Union Women's Chal­lenge at the same venue ear­li­er this year.

How­ev­er, his se­nior women, in­tend­ing to its out­ing at the re­cent Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games as prepa­ra­tion for the qual­i­fiers fin­ished win­less in four match­es, los­ing three and draw­ing the oth­er game.

The team is sched­uled to be­gin ac­tion in the qual­i­fiers from Au­gust 25 and it is un­sure who will be Shabazz re­place­ment to date. Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stand An­ton Corneal is like­ly to take the team through the qual­i­fiers un­til a new coach is found.

Shabazz be­lieves there are coach­es right here with­in our shores who are ca­pa­ble of as­sum­ing his po­si­tion as coach. He, how­ev­er, ex­plained that to take the women's game for­ward, we must en­large the pool of play­ers. "And this will be done through the NL­CB Elite Pro­gramme by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, which is a ma­jor step in that di­rec­tion."