COACH of Guyana’s senior male national football team, Jamaal Shabazz, has given his appreciation to the efforts of sponsors Scotiabank and Pepsi, to develop local football at the grassroots level, for the ongoing Scotiabank/Pepsi nationwide School’s football tournament. Speaking about the tournament just after completing his stint of coaching the national team after the opening two games versus Mexico and Costa Rica, Shabazz articulated his reasons why he feels such tournaments are crucial for the future of football in Guyana.
“Tournaments like the Scotiabank/Pepsi school football tournament are very, very important since they deal with the future of production of players for the country.
“It’s just as important as the ongoing world cup qualifying matches and possibly even more important, because it’s at that early age young players get the exposure in a controlled environment that enables them to start showing signs of technical and tactical ability to be able to play at the next level,” explained Shabazz.
He continued: “So Scotiabank must be applauded for this type of investment. So many times people want to raid the barn, nobody wants to plant the corn and this step by Scotiabank and Pepsi is a real important step in terms of development.
Because any programme for it to sustain itself, it needs a nursery and I think this is what such a programme can do for Guyana football and people who are behind it such as Colin Baker, Lawrence ‘Sparrow’ Griffith and everyone else working behind the scenes to make this happen must be commended.”

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Shabazz concluded his views on the subject by encouraging the business community to follow the lead of Scotiabank and Pepsi, since a consistent pool of the next wave of local Golden Jaguars stars always needs to be produced and only through such tournaments can this be guaranteed.
“This is indeed something that can serve Guyana football in the long term and encourage other sponsors to do similarly to Scotiabank and Pepsi,” Shabazz stated.
“I remember once when Troy Mendonca was president of Georgetown Football Association (GFA), he had many youth tournaments at every level from Under-11 coming right up and this is what is needed to keep producing players.
“Players like Anthony Abrams, Charles Pollard, Kayode McKinnon and Gregory Richardson will not be around forever, so we need to keep producing players.”