Trinidad and Tobago’s Under 17 men’s team secured their passage to the quarter finals of the Tournament of the Americas in Cali,Colombia by defeating club Clyclones 3-1 on Wednesday.
T&T got an opening goal from Jared Dass in the 3rd minute and extended that lead through Jabari Mitchell in the 47th minute and W Connection’s Yafeu Rougier converted a penalty in the 63rd.
T&T had lost their match to 2-1 to Gamag on Tuesday with Rougier being the lone scorer for the Shawn Cooper-coached team. That was T&T’s first loss in the tournament so far and they were scheduled to face Deportivo Cali in their quarter finals on Thursday evening.
Cooper was pleased to see the team progress to that stage as he continues to assess their readiness for next year’s CONCACAF U-17 Final round of qualification in Panama City.
“It’s good to see the players reaching this far in what has been a tournament with good quality and intensity from the teams competing. So far we have been able to show that we too are able to face up well to the requirements of playing this amount of matches in such a short space of time,” Cooper said.
“Generally our fitness has been good but there’s still some work to do and that will only as we continue playing and undergoing more training in the days to come before the year ends,” he added.
Scorer for T&T: #15 J.Dass 03', #08 J.Mitchell 47', #09 Y.Rougier 63' (Pen)
Cyclones: 14' #09
Team Line-up: S.Seepersad (GK), M.Watson, M.Ford, S.Gomez, L.Archer (DF), B.Creed, J.Dass, M.Woo-Ling, A.Toussaint, K.Seecharan (MF), A.Garcia (FW)
Caution:
(T&T) #10 A.Garcia (78')
(T&T) #14 M.Woo-Ling (80')