ALPHA United are known as the top football club in Guyana, having been national champions two years in succession and yesterday the Club founder and boss Odinga Lumumba spoke out on a number of issues such as too many overseas players in the National team atop his list.
Guyana are preparing to face Trinidad and Tobago in their FIFA World Cup qualifiers where they head Group ‘D’ of the CONCACAF leg of the tournament and are just one win away from historically advancing to the third round.
Under Technical Director Jamal Shabazz, the Golden Jaguars have sought the expertise of players who are not only Guyanese by birth but by heritage.
Five players (Ronson Williams, Anthony ‘Awo’ Abrams, Dwight Peters, Richard Reynolds and Dwain Jacobs), including the head coach of the side, Wayne ‘Wiggy’ Dover are from the Alpha United but Lumumba said the fact that Guyana need overseas presence to enhance their chances of qualifying is indicative of the  lack of vision and development of the game locally.
“We all have failed as administrators, we have players here that could get the job done, but there’s no room for development here in Guyana for those players to grow and look at this, now the local players have taken the team this far, why they can’t have a chance of doing this country proud,” said Lumumba.
The football administrator, who also holds the portfolio of Presidential Adviser on Youth Empowerment in the Government of Guyana, went on to state “this is certainly discouraging because the players need something to look forward to. You can’t just dump the local players, how you think Guyana got selected, it was because of these same local players, home grown”.
Asked by Chronicle Sport if he thinks that the players sought by the  Guyana Football Federation (GFF) to represent Guyana are worthy of their selection, Lumumba replied “they more than do, they are playing everyday not as pastime, but as their jobs and some are the best their clubs have to offer” while he also said, “You see, I have great respect for Mr Shabaaz (Jamal), because of how he has transformed football in this country, but what happens when he’s not here”.
“When he’s not here, Dover (Wayne) is the man who is charged with getting the players and team ready and up to now they are yet to offer him (Dover) a job as head coach full time. How can we really be serious about development?” he asked.
Lumumba made it clear that he’s not making representation for players because he would like for his players to get a chance, but because he believes that “everyone deserves the right to represent the country that they born and grow up in. it’s like we plant rice and so how you think the farmers would feel if the government go and bring rice from Asia to sell? Not good I must say, so I say reward these players”.
Meanwhile, Lumumba said that he will be playing in the Georgetown Football Association (GFA) league which is currently on at the Georgetown Football Club (GFC) ground.
The GFA had an injunction filed on most of the GFF executives from interfering in their affairs after the two bodies were entangled in a dispute as to who is legitimate and who’s not.
Yesterday, Lumumba said that he wrote the GFF last week “asking what should I do, I asked them what happen about the Super League and what they plan to do and they didn’t answer me and I told them that I plan to play in the GFA and they didn’t respond to me”.
He further added, “The interesting thing is if you ban/expel a club, so are their players ’cause you can’t ban a country and still use the players. So there’s a contradiction here right now in terms of how can you ban so many clubs and still use their players in a FIFA qualification. So this is a serious issue and I plan to write the GFF again today (yesterday).