Ru­mours are cir­cling the Caribbean that T&T’s Ja­maal Shabazz has stepped down as the head coach of the St Lu­cia men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team.

Shabazz, 57, who has al­so coached the Guyana men’s team as well as served as in­ter­im T&T coach was ap­point­ed head coach of the St Lu­cia men’s team in 2019 and was ex­pect­ed to lead that coun­try through the first round of the 2022 Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fiers against Haiti, Nicaragua, Be­lize and Turks & Caicos.

How­ev­er, on the eve of their open­ing match in the round-robin Group C se­ries in March, St Lu­cia with­drew.

FI­FA did not an­nounce a rea­son for the with­draw­al, say­ing in a state­ment that “fur­ther de­tails will fol­low in due course.”

St. Lu­cia, a Caribbean is­land na­tion ranked 175th, was the first of 211 na­tions to with­draw from qual­i­fy­ing, which has been re­con­fig­ured due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

Host Qatar is guar­an­teed a berth, and the oth­er na­tions are com­pet­ing for 31 slots in the tour­na­ment, to be played from Nov. 21 to Dec. 18 next year.

FI­FA’s dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee may im­pose sanc­tions for a with­draw­al, but sanc­tions usu­al­ly are con­tem­plat­ed in the event of a boy­cott.

Back then the de­ci­sion to with­draw from the qual­i­fiers by the St Lu­cia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion did not sit well with the play­ers and the St Lu­cia Gov­ern­ment.

News that the Saint Lu­cia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (SLFA) took the de­ci­sion to not par­tic­i­pate in the qual­i­fies shocked play­ers of the na­tion­al foot­ball team, who protest­ed out­side the as­so­ci­a­tion’s head­quar­ters in La Clery, de­mand­ing an­swers from the ex­ec­u­tive.

The Gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia re­spond­ed to the news, ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the as­so­ci­a­tion took the de­ci­sion with­out first con­sult­ing with the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sports.

The SLFA is an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion that gov­erns foot­ball with­in Saint Lu­cia.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Saint Lu­cia through its Sports In­fra­struc­ture Pro­gramme made it a pri­or­i­ty to up­grade the Soufriere Mi­ni Sta­di­um to host World Cup qual­i­fiers and the Gov­ern­ment of Saint Lu­cia is clear and un­am­bigu­ous in its com­mit­ment to up­grade fa­cil­i­ties for this par­tic­u­lar ob­jec­tive,” said the state­ment.

The state­ment added: “The Gov­ern­ment of Saint Lu­cia is fur­ther con­cerned about re­ports that the ‘au­thor­i­ties’ turned down re­quests for spe­cial train­ing per­mis­sions for a na­tion­al foot­ball team.

“The gov­ern­ment can con­firm that we have no record of a re­quest be­ing made by the SLFA to have a team train for World Cup Qual­i­fiers.”

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, nei­ther the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sports nor the Of­fice of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer re­ceived such a re­quest.

Added the state­ment: “De­spite the fact that high con­tact sports are not al­lowed un­der the cur­rent Covid-19 pro­to­cols due to the high risk the gov­ern­ment has made spe­cial pro­vi­sions for na­tion­al ath­letes and this is re­flect­ed in the leg­is­la­tion. The Gov­ern­ment of Saint Lu­cia, through the Min­istry of Health, re­cent­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed train­ing for Plat­inum FC from Vieux Fort South who are due to trav­el in April for a tour­na­ment in Cu­ra­cao.

“The Gov­ern­ment will al­so be as­sist­ing with the vac­ci­na­tion of these foot­ballers and team mem­bers. The Min­istry of Health has al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed some net­ballers and oth­er ath­letes who re­quest­ed one-on-one train­ing or train­ing with strict pro­to­cols.

“Hope­ful­ly, the Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion will en­gage with the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sports and lo­cal foot­ballers to re­solve this mat­ter.

“We look for­ward to the full clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Saint Lu­cia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion as to the rea­sons for Saint Lu­cia’s with­draw­al.

The Gov­ern­ment of Saint Lu­cia has made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in sports in Saint Lu­cia, in­clud­ing foot­ball, with the es­tab­lish­ment of the Sports Acad­e­my and the up­grad­ing of all our sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties in or­der to at­tract re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments.

“The Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to do all it can to fa­cil­i­tate the ad­vance­ment of our ath­letes and Saint Lu­cia as a leader in sports.

“The Gov­ern­ment sees the par­tic­i­pa­tion in ac­tiv­i­ties such as World Cup Qual­i­fiers as crit­i­cal to the de­vel­op­ment of sports and has done all in its pow­er to fa­cil­i­tate the in­volve­ment of our ath­letes."

Ef­forts were made to con­tact Shabazz, the for­mer T&T na­tion­al women’s coach and Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of lo­cal pro­fes­sion­al out Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed.

Ef­forts were made to con­tact Shabazz, the for­mer T&T na­tion­al women’s coach and Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of lo­cal pro­fes­sion­al out Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed but up to press time there was no con­tact.

Shabazz had signed two-year con­tract back in 2019 to re­place Fran­cis “Panko” Mc Don­ald who man­aged the St Lu­cian team, dur­ing the Wind­ward Is­lands Se­nior Foot­ball Tour­na­ment and and it is ru­moured he has al­ready found em­ploy­ment with an­oth­er Caribbean Foot­ball Union na­tion, with an an­nounce­ment ex­pect­ed to be made soon.