T&T’s se­nior foot­ballers were beat­en 1-0 by Cu­ra­cao in Thurs­day night's Con­ca­caf Na­tions League (CNL), group A en­counter at the Ergilio Ha­to Sta­di­um in Willem­stad. The re­sult push­es the So­ca War­riors clos­er to rel­e­ga­tion from League A to League B. Coach Derek King’s men have now lost all three match­es in the tour­na­ment and re­main on ze­ro points, the same as both Cos­ta Ri­ca and Nicaragua, who were sched­uled to face each oth­er at 10 pm on Thurs­day, at Nicaragua’s Na­tion­al Foot­ball Sta­di­um.

If ei­ther of them gets a win or even a draw, it would mean that by the time T&T com­pletes its CNL cam­paign on Sun­day with a re­verse fix­ture against Cu­ra­cao at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain, the team’s League A tenure could be over.

Mo­lik Khan and Ko­bi Hen­ry made starts for T&T as mid­field­er Daniel Phillips and Wayne Fred­er­icks, who were red-card­ed on Sun­day, were giv­en four-match and one-game sus­pen­sions, re­spec­tive­ly.

Still, for­tune failed to fol­low King and his men when cap­tain Levi Gar­cia went down clutch­ing his ham­string in the 13th minute, with no play­er close to him. King, now fac­ing a moun­tain to climb to see off rel­e­ga­tion with­out his most high-pro­file play­er, opt­ed to in­tro­duce Re­on Moore, who was over­looked by coach Dwight Yorke in the fi­nal rounds of the World Cup qual­i­fiers.

How­ev­er, Cu­ra­cao, fresh from a first-ever ap­pear­ance at the FI­FA World Cup in June, went on the ear­ly at­tack that left the T&T de­fence back­ing. Ken­ji Gorre dis­played blind­ing speed to get past Ja­heim Joseph down the left flank, and his cen­tre was struck pow­er­ful­ly by Jun­in­ho Ba­cu­na in­side the T&T penal­ty area, on­ly for Den­zil Smith to hold on.

Cu­ra­cao’s eon­slaught should not come as a sur­prise for the T&T de­fence, since the Blue Wave had net­ted 10 goals in two pre­vi­ous wins against Cos­ta Ri­ca (4-3) and Nicaragua (6-1). But the win­less T&T, de­fend­ed stout­ly un­til they could cre­ate some­thing at the at­tack­ing end. In the 32nd minute, Dan­taye Gilbert, an­oth­er play­er pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked by Yorke but called back by King, rushed in­to the box to meet a left-side cor­ner, but he put it wide.

A minute from the half-time break, Cu­ra­cao’s Tahith Chong and Shu­randy Sam­bo com­bined to en­ter the T&T goal area, but with de­fend­ers around him, Sam­bo’s snap shot was gob­bled up by Smith in the T&T goal. Short­ly af­ter that chance, ref­er­ee Os­hane Na­tion of Ja­maica sent the teams off to the dress­ing room tied at 0-0 at the half­time break.

There was not much dif­fer­ence in the or­der of pro­ceed­ings when they re­turned to the field 15 min­utes lat­er, and with the home team con­tin­u­ing to probe, Chong, us­ing his pace, got to the by­line in the 57th minute and picked out Ba­cu­na (Jun­in­ho), whose left-foot­ed dri­ve was some­how pushed wide by the out­stretched arms of Smith.

A minute lat­er, though, the home team was re­ward­ed for their ef­forts. Ba­cu­na raced on to an­oth­er long di­ag­o­nal ball from Chong and stretched his right foot out to prod the ball past the ad­vanc­ing Smith for a 1-0 lead.

The dom­i­nant Cu­ra­cao men might have had an­oth­er item in the 67th minute. This time Chong gal­loped on­to a thread­ed ball on top of the T&T area, but his curl­ing at­tempt whisked past the up­right.

Three min­utes lat­er, T&T’s pain in­ten­si­fied when Dan­taye Gilbert was shown the red card for his sec­ond book­able of­fence for a tack­le on Chong in the 70th minute.

Still, with rel­e­ga­tion loom­ing and a nu­mer­i­cal dis­ad­van­tage, King’s men caused pan­ic when Luke Phillip stormed in­to the box for a sight at goal. His thun­der­ous shot from the left rat­tled the Cu­ra­cao goal but stayed out.

Two min­utes from the end, the home team had the chance to in­crease the ad­van­tage when Na­tion sent them to the penal­ty spot af­ter the in­flu­en­tial Chong went down on a chal­lenge in­side the penal­ty area. Smith came up big again by push­ing wide the at­tempt by Leonar­do Ba­cu­na to pre­serve the 1-0 score­line.

Both teams fought in the re­main­ing mo­ments, but nei­ther could have got­ten an­oth­er goal, and so it end­ed 1-0 to Cu­ra­cao, who main­tained the top spot in the group with a per­fect nine points from three match­es.

Teams

Cu­ra­cao

1 Eloy Room (gk), 2 Shu­randy Sam­bo, 3 Ju­rien Gaari, 5 Sher­el Flo­ranus, 7 Jun­in­ho Ba­cu­na, 8 Li­vano Come­nen­cia, 9 Ju­r­gen Lo­ca­dia, 10 Le­an­dro Ba­cu­na, 14 Ken­ji Gorre, 18 Aman­do Obis­po, 21 Tahith Chong

Subs

22 Tyrick Bo­dak (gk), 23 Kiyani Zeggen (gk), 4 Ju­rich Car­oli­na, 6 Nicky Souren, 11 Je­re­my An­tonisse, 12 Kyano Pen­so, 15 Ar­jany Martha, 16 Jearl Ma­g­a­ritha, 17 Tyrese Noslin, 20 Joshua Brenet

T&T

22 Den­zil Smith, 3 Ko­bi Hen­ry, 4 Ja­heim Joseph, 6 An­drew De Gannes, 7 Ryan Telfer, 10 Mo­lik Khan, 11 Levi Gar­cia, 15 Dan­taye Gilbert, 16 Michel Poon Angeron, 19 Rio Car­dines, 20 Re­al Gill

Subs

1 Jabari Brice, 21 Ja­heim Wick­ham, 5 Ne­veal Hack­shaw, 8 Luke Phillip, 9 Daniel David, 12 Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton, 13 Re­on Moore, 17 Justin Gar­cia, 18 An­dre Ram­per­sad, 23 Noah Pow­der