T&T Un­der-17 women’s coach Ayana Rus­sell has called for more in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure for the play­ers fol­low­ing her team’s third de­feat from as many match­es in their Group C CON­CA­CAF Fi­nal Round Qual­i­fiers, a heart-wrench­ing 2-1 loss at the death to Hon­duras at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Sat­ur­day night.

Af­ter go­ing down to the USA 3-0 in their open­er and 4-0 to El Sal­vador, the So­ca Princess­es went in­to their fi­nal match against Hon­duras play­ing for pride and a chance to avenge their Round One qual­i­fi­er 1-0 loss to the same op­po­nents at the same venue in late Jan­u­ary.

How­ev­er, as ear­ly as the third minute, Hon­duras went ahead through Alexan­dra Mer­ri­am from the penal­ty spot, low to the right of T&T goal­keep­er Zaira Aimey, af­ter Guatemalan ref­er­ee Dil­ia Bradley blew her whis­tle for an in­fringe­ment in the 18-yard box from a Hon­duras cor­ner kick to award the vis­i­tors the shock­ing penal­ty.

Four min­utes in­to in­jury time at the end of the first half, USA-born mid­field­er Diem-Marie Sealey of FC Dal­las and the daugh­ter of for­mer So­ca War­riors strik­er Scott Sealey drew the host lev­el from a cor­ner kick as well, af­ter the ball be­came loose in the penal­ty area.

It was the first goal of the tour­na­ment for T&T as they looked to end a nine-match los­ing streak at the cham­pi­onship lev­el of the tour­na­ment.

But, just when it seemed as though the T&T girls would earn a share of the points, Anan­sy La­gos snatched the win­ner for Hon­duras three min­utes in­to time added on at the end of full time when his long and hope­ful free kick in­to the 18-yard box was al­lowed to bounce by Aimey, who then had to tip it on­to the cross­bar.

Un­luck­i­ly for Aimey and her team­mates, though, the ric­o­chet off the bar hit the turf and spun back in­to the T&T goal, de­spite the ef­forts of the goal­keep­er and her team­mates to stop it cross­ing the line as the vis­i­tors se­cured a first win and con­demned the host to a third straight de­feat.

Com­ment­ing af­ter the match, Rus­sell ad­mit­ted that she was hope­ful of a top-two fin­ish in the group, but they fell short of their tar­get, and this could be put down to a lack of prepa­ra­tion.

She said, “With Hon­duras and El Sal­vador in our group, I be­lieve we could have come out vic­to­ri­ous. I be­lieve in the team, and I know what they can do.”

“But we def­i­nite­ly need more games. We nev­er got a prac­tice be­fore the test, so their first re­al game was the USA, and I thought we did an ex­cel­lent job.

Look­ing ahead, Rus­sell, a for­mer na­tion­al stand­out, added, “So, I think it is just a mat­ter of re­al­ly giv­ing them the best chance. We need to play a lit­tle more, es­pe­cial­ly these sorts of teams. That’s the on­ly way we are go­ing to grow.”

In gen­er­al, the T&T coach said she was re­al­ly proud of her girls. We knew what we could do, and we set­tled in ear­ly and just want to say that I’m very proud of the ef­fort we fin­ished off the cam­paign with.”

She added, “One of the things that I put in­to their brain is we need to love to de­fend be­cause at this lev­el, we have al­ways strug­gled to stay or­gan­ised and dis­ci­plined. But with that, I think they for­got that they need to love to at­tack al­so.

“I think it was just to give them that re­minder and be­lief. Some­times you have to put the ball down and play, and tonight they just seemed more like them­selves, and we got to see what they could do a lit­tle bit more.”

Sealey said, “It’s been re­al­ly good rep­re­sent­ing T&T, and for my goal, I felt re­al­ly ex­hil­a­rat­ed be­cause it was my first time play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in a tour­na­ment this big, so it was def­i­nite­ly nice to be able to score, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter both our goal­less games against the USA and El Sal­vador.”

She added, “Com­ing in, I thought it was go­ing to be tough against the best play­ers, El Sal­vador, Hon­duras and the USA, and I was re­al­ly glad to be part of the ex­pe­ri­ence.”

In the day’s first match at Cou­va, the USA ham­mered El Sal­vador 7-0 to fin­ish top of their group and seal their tick­et to Mo­roc­co as one of the three group win­ners who will be joined by the best sec­ond-placed team to qual­i­fy for the FI­FA U-17 Women’s World Cup lat­er this year.

With the win, the USA end­ed with a max­i­mum of nine goals and 17 goals scored with­out con­ced­ing to head to Mo­roc­co in style, while El Sal­vador stayed sec­ond with four points and a mi­nus-three goal dif­fer­ence.

Join­ing the USA at the World Cup were Group A win­ners Mex­i­co, who clob­bered Haiti 12-0 for a max­i­mum nine points and a goal dif­fer­ence of plus-21, while Cos­ta Ri­ca thrashed Bermu­da 9-1 to en­hance their goal dif­fer­ence to plus-12 with six points, with Puer­to Ri­co (plus-nine) and Cana­da (plus-sev­en) who met in their Group B de­cider last night. On­ly the team that fin­ish­es top of Group B will be cer­tain of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to Mo­roc­co.

Sat­ur­day’s Re­sults

USA 7 (Micay­la John­son 10th, 55th pen, Scot­tie An­tonuc­ci 20th, Ash­lyn An­der­son 47th, 49th, Nyanya Touray 58th, Grace­lynn Mil­am 74th) vs El Sal­vador 0

Hon­duras 2 (Alexan­dra Mer­ri­am 3rd pen, Al­lanys San­tos 90+1) vs T&T 1 (Diem-Marie Sealy 45+1)

TEAMS

T&T: 1.Zaira Aimey (GK); 15.Kani­ka Ro­driguez (20.Jes­si­ca Nes­bitt 70th), 2.Kait­lyn Dar­went (capt), 17.Mikaela Year­wood, 3.Hac­k­eemar Goodridge; 6.Che­ri­na Steele, 9.Mia Lee Chong; 11.San­ni Wil­son (8.Ty’kaiya Den­nis 70th), 4.Diem Sealy, 19.Giu­liana Mey­er; 10.Orielle Mar­tin.

Subs not used: 18.Ken­isha Tay­lor (GK), 21.Alex­ia Dol­land (GK), 5.Taya Williams, 7.Rashe­da Archer, 12.Rori Git­tens, 13.Zye­sha Potts, 14.Cher­ine Steele, 16.Madi­son Camp­bell.

Coach: Ayana Rus­sell.

Hon­duras: 1.Maria Jiminez (GK); 13.No­he­my Meza (6.Stephany Mer­ca­do 79th), 16.Il­sy Sevil­la, 2.Yen­si Fer­rera, 18.Evelin Or­donez; 5.Na­talia Gar­cia (cap­tain), 19.Al­lanys San­tos, 9.Chelsea Farmer (4.Al­li­son Sua­zo 46th); 17.Ja­z­lyn Sanchez (11.Kasey Chiri­nos 67th), 10.Alexan­dra Mer­ri­am (8.Paula Ramirez Guardi­o­la 90+2), 7.Den­nise Madrid.

Subs not used: 12.Mia Hey­er (GK), 21.Kim­ber­ly Ro­driguez (GK), 3.Em­ma Munoz, 15.Ash­ley Es­calante, 20.Liz Manue­les.

Coach: Mario Aba­dia.

Cur­rent stand­ings

Group A:

Mex­i­co*3*3*0*0*21*0*9

Cos­ta Ri­ca*3*2*0*1*17*5*6

Haiti*3*1*0*2*4*21*3

Bermu­da*3*0*0*3*2*18*0

Group B

Puer­to Ri­co*2*2*0*0*10*1*6

Cana­da*2*2*0*0*7*6

Pana­ma*2*0*0*2*1*8*0

Nicaragua*2*0*0*2*0*9*0

Group C

USA*3*3*0*0*17*0*9

El Sal­vador*3*1*1*1*5*8*4

Hon­duras*3*1*1*1*3*9*4

T&T*3*0*0*3*1*9*0