TUCKER, St James — Montego Bay United’s (MBU) fascination with foreign coaches looks set to continue this upcoming 2015/16 Red Stripe Premier League season with American Timothy Hankinson expected to take the reins of the team.

The much travelled 60-year-old American has been in the island about a week, and will be helping to prepare the team for their ScotiaBank CONCACAF Champions League game against US Major League team DC United in Washington DC on August 25, the Jamaica Observer was told.

Though it has not been formalised, MBU executives point to the possibility that Hankinson could be the man to call the shots when the Red Stripe Premier League gets underway next month.

He would be the third overseas coach to lead the team in their fifth season in the Premier League following Brazilian Nedier Dos Santos and Spaniard Carlos Garcia. Garcia was let go at the end of the last season and is now part of the Reggae Boyz coaching set-up.

Hankinson takes over from Dr Dean Weatherly who guided the team into the semi-finals past Waterhouse, and into the final of the Red Stripe Premier League where they lost to Arnett Gardens. MBU also lost their first game in the CONCACAF competition to Panama Club Arabe Unido.

While he will be working in the Jamaican environment for the first time, Hankinson says he is not totally unfamiliar with the Jamaica’s football, having coached former Jamaican internationals Paul Young at the University of Syracuse and Chris Dawes at Colorado Rapids in the MLS.

“I’ve been to many countries due to football,” he told the Observer. “This is the first time I will be working in the environment, but I have worked in environments that are not too different like Guatemala and India… there are challenges wherever you look, but they don’t scare me and I look forward to taking on the challenges every day, and make the best of them,” said the American.

In an interview at the team’s training grounds in Tucker on Thursday, Hankinson, who was overseeing the training along with Weatherly, said he relishes another new challenge.

“Whenever you walk on a field and 30 new players walk towards you, it’s important to get off to a good start, because it’s about buying into ideas and trusting each other and believing that the direction that I am giving is a good one for them that can make them successful.”

Hankinson says things have got off to a good start.

“I think so far the ideas we have introduced and the way we have been training with a lot of football involved, where we basically hide the fitness within the work we do, any footballer enjoy that and I think they see progress and are getting better every day,” he noted.

MBU’s game against Unido Arabe was the only time Hankinson had seen the team and admitted it “wasn’t a great night for them”.

“But I saw hope, and I saw qualities in their game,” he said.

Hankinson that MBU are at a disadvantage in the CONCACAF competition.

“This is a team (MBU) in pre-season — you go against a team in Panama that had many preparation games and this team (MBU) had none. When we go to DC United, that’s a team in mid-season in the MLS, they have been training since January, and maybe had 20 pre-season games and 30 games in cup competitions. We have had one; the Panama game.

“So we are at the beginning of the process, whereas the teams we are playing against are in the middle of the process so that means we have to accelerate our ability to be effective and keep faith,” Hankinson noted.