Jo-Marie Lewis scored a lone goal for the T&T Under-17 Soca Princesses, as they stumbled 1-3 away to their Mexican counterparts on Thursday at the Centro de Alto Rendimiento de la FMF, Mexico. Technical Director of women's football in T&T, Even Pellerud, of Norway, insisted that the Mexicans can be beaten in the second match of the friendly series today, once his players learn from their mistakes. "The performance gap is still not scary, if we will learn from our errors and do better in the second game today," said Pellerud.
The Norwegian explained that his team took the field without several regular starters, including 14-year-old Under-20 player, Kayla Taylor. Pellerud expressed his disappointment in his team's weak start in the match, even taking the high altitude into consideration. Mexico took the lead from as early as the second minute through Cinthia Sandoval and doubled the score before the end of the half, Fabiola Ibarra striking in the 39th. Ibarra then added another to her tally in the 52nd before Lewis, pulled one back for T&T in the 53rd minute, capitalising on an accurate through-ball from Khadidra Debesette.
T&T's defence managed to avoid conceding any further goals and Pellerud maintained that his team played a strong second half, but was simply unable to recover from an unlucky start. "In the second half, we played nice attacking football and followed up with several good goal-scoring opportunities with Mexico starting to look more tired than our players," stated Pellerud. "The Match evened out, but we were never able to match the intensity level that the team normally plays with." The Mexicans, he explained, were still more comfortable on the ball and deserved the win.
