Trinidad and Tobago's Men's Under 20 team defeated St Vincent and the Grenadines 4-1 in its return leg game of the Caribbean Football Union Under 20 qualifying match at the Marvin Lee Stadium on Wednesday night.
Johan Peltier opened the scoring for T&T as early as the 6th minute, but the second string T&T side didn't do too much to penetrate the visitor’s defense despite being the better side and had to settle for the one goal advantage going into the half.
T&T were however a different side in the second period and netted three goals all coming from their substitutes. Recent T&T senior team call-up Shahdon Winchester scored off a Jerrel Britto assist to give T&T a 2-0 lead in the 73rd. Then strikes from Ryan Fredericks in the 89th and Jerrel Britto finished the job for the young Warriors.
Britto, who had two assist scored in the dying minutes of the game when he held off the challenge by defender Krishan Gonzalves to beat the advancing goalkeeper McZiggy Richards, his goal coming almost in immediate response to St Vincent's consolation item via Keeson Rouse with Myron Samuel as the provider.
With the win, T&T won the home-and-away series 12-1 after an 8-0 win in Kingstown on Friday to advance to the Group D decider against Suriname on December 10 (away) and five days later at home.
The winner of the T&T/Suriname series will earn Concacaf’s fourth spot to the Final Round qualifiers where they will join the three other CFU group winners, Cuba (Group A), Guadeloupe (Group B) and Jamaica (Group C) for the 12-team tournament in Guatemala from April 3-17 next year.
“It was not such a great performance because I expected more from the team, but I can also understand it because we used some new players and you could see they were not so comfortable and maybe a bit nervous, but I think we still deserved the win,” Vranes told Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) media officer Shaun Fuentes.
“The important thing is that we are through to the next two matches and we must prepare for that now. We will have a look at what Suriname has to offer and ensure that our preparations are in relation to how we will play them. "I don’t see any team in the Caribbean being able to beat us, but we must always be ahead in our performances and prove it out here,” Vranes added.
“I wanted to see how the players would play a match like this one because we had already won the other match 8-0 and I didn’t have any intentions of taking the game easily. We were never under pressure or in danger of losing the match and it gave us the chance to see some of the other players,” he said.
Teams
T&T: - 21.Jamal Francois; 19.Wesley John, 15.Dwight Ceballo, 16.Kevin Raymond, 4.Sheldon Bateau (capt); 2.Dinell Lopez (10.Jerrel Britto 46th), 18.Ross Russell Jr, 6.Ryan Frederick, 13.Dion McCree (7.Shahdon Winchester 46th), 14.Jerron Quashie (11.Cordell Cato 61st); 9.Johan Peltier.
St Vincent: - McZiggy Richards; Gregson Hazell, Nichol Stephens, Baldwin Debique, Daniel Patrick; Antonio Douglas, Zenroy Lee, Krishan Gonsalves, Valdo Anderson; Akeeno Hazelwood (Junior Da Silva 77th), Myron Samuel (capt).
Video: - Highlights