The T&T T&T Un­der-17 men’s foot­ball team will be go­ing all out for vic­to­ry when they come up against the British Vir­gin Is­lands in their sec­ond Group B match of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 Cham­pi­onship Qual­i­fiers at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional in San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca from 6 pm on Sun­day.

With on­ly the win­ners of the eight re­spec­tive groups be­ing con­test­ed across the Con­ca­caf re­gion qual­i­fy­ing for the 2025 FI­FA Un­der-17 World Cup from No­vem­ber 5 to 27 in Qatar, which will be the first to fea­ture 48 teams, the Shawn Coop­er-coached young So­ca War­riors faced Guyana on Fri­day night and were hope­ful of a win­ning start to their five-team round se­ries, which al­so in­volves host Cos­ta Ri­ca and Sint Maarten, who meet in tonight’s sec­ond match at 9 pm.

How­ev­er, the young ‘So­ca War­riors’ had to set­tle for a share of the points against the young Gold­en Jaguars af­ter their 1-1 draw, which left both teams with lit­tle room for fur­ther slip-ups if they were to fin­ish top of the ta­ble and earn their tick­et to Qatar.

The British Vir­gin Is­lands en­ters to­day’s meet­ing with T&T as group lead­ers af­ter they thumped Sint Maarten 4-0 in the Group B open­er at the same venue on Fri­day.

In the night’s sec­ond match, Coop­er was hope­ful of a win­ning start from his play­ers, and strik­er Phillip Nel­son sound­ed a warn­ing as ear­ly as the 14th minute when his left-foot­ed di­ag­o­nal ef­fort des­tined for the bot­tom left-hand cor­ner of the goal was just pushed wide by Guyana’s Spain-based goal­keep­er Tej­pal Ni­j­jar.

Ni­j­jar was called in­to ac­tion again in the 27th minute, this time to push over a long-range right-foot­ed blast from USA-based T&T mid­field­er Do­minic Joseph.

Four min­utes lat­er, Guyana had their first at­tempt on goal with Quaen­cy Fras­er’s right-foot­ed free kick be­ing pushed over the bar by 14-year-old T&T cus­to­di­an Levi Williams.

How­ev­er, from the re­sult­ing cor­ner tak­en by Fras­er, Williams’s ca­su­al ap­proach to col­lect­ing the ball re­sult­ed in it be­ing dropped at the feet of de­fend­er Joshua Mor­ris to tap home from less than six yards out for the lead against the run of play, which they car­ried in­to the in­ter­val.

T&T mount­ed an at­tack right a minute af­ter the restart, and from a cor­ner tak­en by Jay­don Ca­pri­et­ta, the ball de­flect­ed off a Guyana de­fend­er and in­to the path of Nel­son, who saw his goal­ward ef­fort kept out by a re­flex save with his feet by Ni­j­jar.

The young So­ca War­riors de­served­ly drew lev­el in the 53rd minute when Ca­pri­eta’s left-sided cross found an un­marked Joseph, who at­tempt­ed to drib­ble past Guyana cap­tain Shaquan David and Tamer Un­ver, with the ball trick­ling to an un­marked Nel­son, who pounced on the ball and fired in­to the gap­ing goal de­spite Ni­j­jar get­ting both hands to it for a 1-1 score.

Nel­son then had two chances with­in the space of four min­utes to put T&T ahead, but he failed to make use of both. First­ly, he skew­ered an at­tempt on goal wide of the tar­get in the 57th, and in the 61st minute, he held off a chal­lenge from Un­ver af­ter be­ing sent through on goal by a live­ly Joseph but was de­nied at point-blank range by Ni­j­jar.

The duo of Adasa Richard­son and Ca­den Tre­strail, who may have con­sid­ered them­selves un­lucky not to fea­ture from the first whis­tle, were in­tro­duced by Coop­er at the ex­pense of. Ja­sai Theophilus and Joseph scored re­spec­tive­ly in the 65th minute but could not spark the team in­to find­ing a win­ner, as the match end­ed in a dis­ap­point­ing draw for Coop­er’s men.

In Fri­day’s open­er, the British Vir­gin Is­lands got a pair of goals from Lu­ca Stut­tard in the 69th and 73rd af­ter Sam Shar­ma’s 34th-minute open­er was fol­lowed by La­triel Williams 62nd-minute item.

Fri­day’s Re­sults

Group A

Turks & Caicos Is­lads 3 vs An­guil­la 0

Cu­ra­cao 6 vs Bermu­da 1

Group B

British Vir­gin Is­lands 4 (Lu­ca Stut­tard 69th, 73rd, Sam Shar­ma 34th, La­triel Williams 62nd) vs Sint Maarten 0

T&T 1 (Phillip Nel­son 54th) vs Guyana 1 (Joshua Mor­ris 33rd)

Group C

Be­lize 7 vs Do­mini­ca 0

Nicaragua 6 vs Bar­ba­dos 0

To­day’s match­es

Group A

Turks & Caicos vs Cana­da, 3 pm

Bermu­da vs An­guil­la, 8 pm

Group B

T&T vs British Vir­gin Is­lands, 6 pm

Sint Maarten vs Cos­ta Ri­ca, 9 pm

Group C

Nicaragua vs Be­lize, 2 pm

Do­mini­ca vs Mex­i­co, 5 pm