T&T Un­der-20 foot­ballers were boot­ed out of the CON­CA­CAF Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onships af­ter be­ing thrashed 4-1 by Cos­ta Ri­ca at the Es­ta­dio Yankel Rosen­thal in San Pe­dro Su­la in the round of 16s on Sat­ur­day.

It came cour­tesy of a dou­ble strike from Do­ri­an Ro­dríguez in the 68th and 78th min­utes.

Fol­low­ing a group stage that saw the ju­nior War­riors draw­ing 4-4 with Haiti, los­ing 5-0 to gi­ants Mex­i­co and de­feat­ing Suri­name 3-0 in their last match on Thurs­day night, coach An­gus Eve was hop­ing for an im­proved ef­fort than they did then.

Eve made a few changes to the team that start­ed the last match in a move to take a more de­fen­sive ap­proach, but it did not pre­vent the Cos­ta Ri­cans from go­ing ahead in the 17th minute from Josi­mar Al­cócer.

Both teams failed to score in the re­main­ing time be­fore the half-time in­ter­val, but when the game restart­ed, the Cos­ta Ri­cans went two goals up, cour­tesy of Shawn John­son’s 63rd minute item.

Trail­ing 2-0, the T&T men saw their chances of ad­vanc­ing to the quar­ter-fi­nal round iof the com­pe­ti­tion dem­i­nish, still with all to fight for they pressed on. This was un­til the Ro­driguez got his first goal and his team’s third in the 68th minute.

And 10 min­utes lat­er the Cos­ta Ri­cans drilled the fi­nal nail in the T&T cof­fin when Ro­dríguez got his sec­ond item in the 78th to se­cure their en­try in­to the quar­ter­fi­nals. T&T’s lone item on the day came from cap­tain Mo­lik Khan in the 87th minute. (WA)

TT TEAM

18 Tris­tan Ed­wards GK, 2 Chris­t­ian Bai­ley, 3 Mar­vin Wal­drop, 4 Ja­heim Joseph, 5 Jaron Pas­cal, 6 Kas­sidy David­son, 10 Mo­lik Khan, 13 Noah Ro­ka, 14 Josi­ah Coop­er, 15 Mic­ah Cain, 16 Tyrik Trot­man.

Re­serves

1 Jahiem Wick­ham GK, 7 Kai­him Thomas, 8 Luke Phillip, 9 Re­al Gill, 11 Nathaniel James, 12 Josi­ah Wil­son, 17 An­drew De Gannes, 19 Isa­iah Thomp­son, 20 Tarik Lee