T&T's quest for qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Fi­fa Un­der-17 World Cup came to a solemn end on Sat­ur­day night at the Es­ta­dio Agustin Muqui­ta Sanchez, La Chor­rera, as they suf­fered a 4-2 de­feat to Pana­ma in the quar­ter­fi­nal Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fy­ing en­counter.

In front a par­ti­san Pana­man­ian crowd of around 6,000, T&T shocked the hosts with the ide­al start in the 17th minute when mid­field­er An­dre For­tune's bril­liant right-foot­ed shot flew past goal­keep­er Jaime de Gra­cia and in­to the top right cor­ner of the net.

Be­fore that, T&T al­so start­ed well and al­most went ahead in the third minute af­ter the Pana­ma de­fence failed to clear a low right side cor­ner al­low­ing Brent Sam to make con­tact be­fore the ball bounced just over the cross­bar.

Two min­utes be­fore For­tune's strike, the mid­field­er played in a left side free-kick on the near post and de­fend­er Le­land Archer missed a glo­ri­ous chance from six yards, on­ly able to di­rect his ef­fort wide of the up­right. Soon af­ter For­tune would score one of the goals of the tour­na­ment, when he met a ball played on by Sam and po­si­tioned him­self well just out­side the box be­fore un­leash­ing the right foot­er which left De Gra­cia with­out a prayer.

But Pana­ma kept their heads up af­ter go­ing be­hind and be­gan to dic­tate the pace of the match. T&T goal­keep­er Jo­han Welch came up big time for the ju­nior So­ca War­riors with at least four cru­cial saves in the first half and an­oth­er se­ries of stops in the sec­ond half to keep his team in the game.

Pana­ma tied the scores in the 35th minute when Je­sus Araya con­nect­ed with a loose ball and fired goal­wards past Welch, who got a faint touch on the ball.

The Hous­ton Dy­namo Acad­e­my 'keep­er made an­oth­er good stop ear­ly in the sec­ond half but was un­lucky when Luis Zu­ni­ga's 25-yard shot slipped un­der him and in­to the goal to send the Pana­man­ian play­ers and fans in­to a fren­zy.

T&T were forced to chase their op­po­nents af­ter they got the go ahead goal and Welch again came up big on two fur­ther oc­ca­sions, pulling off great stops to de­ny Is­mael Di­az.

But the home team kept press­ing and found a third goal in the 79th minute when Ervin Zor­ril­la back-heeled for Di­az to slot past Welch.

Sam and Kishun Seecha­ran strug­gled to get go­ing on the evening and Akeem Gar­cia was kept qui­et for al­most all of the match, forc­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of Aikim Arm­strong (re­placed an in­jured Levi Gar­cia), Jared Dass and Weah Adams, who even­tu­al­ly pulled a goal back sev­en min­utes from time. Gar­cia did the bulk of the work be­fore play­ing in­side for Adams to con­vert. But any hopes of a late T&T come­back were di­min­ished when Di­az stepped up again to hit home in the 88th minute.

T&T wing­back Shan­non Gomez, who was out­stand­ing through­out the qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, was sent off in the sec­ond half for a sec­ond book­able of­fence.

"I think tonight the team that want­ed it more, came out on top. We had some of our key play­ers not re­al­ly com­ing out with their best per­for­mance and that hurt us in this match; but over­all, we felt good about reach­ing to the point of one game away from qual­i­fy­ing and it's some­thing that we can take away with us and hope­ful­ly build this team for the fu­ture in­clud­ing the U-20 qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign for 2015," said a dis­ap­point­ed head coach Shawn Coop­er.

"I hope that we can con­tin­ue with a good pro­gramme to take this team in­to the fu­ture. For most of the play­ers, this was prob­a­bly their fifth or sixth in­ter­na­tion­al match and I don't think it's suf­fi­cient for us to be suc­cess­ful at this lev­el.

"But we still man­aged to hold our own and get our­selves to this stage and this shows what could be pos­si­ble if we have prepa­ra­tions that starts long be­fore the tour­na­ment and with qual­i­ty warm-up match­es."

This is Pana­ma's sec­ond suc­ces­sive qual­i­fi­ca­tion for a Fi­fa U-17 World Cup and the same for Cana­da which de­feat­ed Ja­maica 4-2 in the first quar­ter fi­nal match on Sat­ur­day.

Pana­ma salutes War­riors

For­mer Pana­ma in­ter­na­tion­al Jorge De­ly Valdez, now head coach of the Pana­ma U-17 team salut­ed T&T for their per­for­mance. The win saw the home team book their place in the FI­FA U-17 World Cup in Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Speak­ing dur­ing the post-match con­fer­ence in La Chor­rera, Valdez said, "Pana­ma had a very tough match tonight. I had to ask whether they un­der­stood that they were play­ing for a tick­et to go to the World Cup and I thought T&T was play­ing like the home team to get to the World Cup. I en­cour­aged my team at half time."

He fur­ther went on to say: "We had to work very hard to come back in­to the match but Trinidad kept mak­ing it tough for us and al­so we could not make use of our scor­ing chances. I think their per­for­mance was good but we came back out stronger af­ter the first goal and we had a very good sec­ond half.

"Tonight we are very de­light­ed to have sealed qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Un­der 17 World Cup with a hard-fought vic­to­ry. All of the teams were dif­fi­cult ri­vals and Trinidad was no ex­cep­tion. We have to thank the Pana­ma Fed­er­a­tion for the prepa­ra­tion and all the warm up games that we got which turned out to be very im­por­tant.

T&T line up

1. Jo­han Welch (gk), 2. Shan­non Gomez, 4. Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham, 5. Le­land Archer, 6. Bren­don Creed (capt), 7. Kishun Seecha­ran (19. Weah Adams, 69'), 9. Akeem Gar­cia, 14. An­dre For­tune, 15. Brent Sam (11.Jared Dass, 53'), 16. Levi Gar­cia (8. Aikim An­drews, 48'), 17. Mar­tieon Wat­son.

Subs that did not play 10. Matthew Woo Ling, 12. Jabari Mitchell, 13. An­der­son Tou­s­saint, 18. Ster­ling Nor­eiga, 21. Stephon Seep­er­sad (gk)

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