WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

A first-half hat trick by Je­sus Fer­reira, cou­pled with three oth­er goals from Cade Cow­ell, Gi­an­lu­ca Bu­sio and Bran­don Vazquez in the sec­ond half guid­ed a sec­ond-string USA team to a con­vinc­ing 6-0 vic­to­ry over the T&T So­ca War­riors in a cru­cial Group A en­counter of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup at the Bank of Amer­i­ca Sta­di­um in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, yes­ter­day.

The win as­sured the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons won the group, as well as se­cured a place in­to the quar­ter­fi­nals, along with Ja­maica who al­so ham­mered St Kitts/Nevis 5-0 in the oth­er Group A en­counter.

The US, with four points, need­ed just a draw, while the War­riors, de­spite a 3-0 tri­umph over St Kitts/Nevis in their first game, need­ed to win fol­low­ing their 1-4 loss to Ja­maica in a Caribbean der­by on June 28 at the City Park.

T&T coach An­gus Eve, made six changes to the team that lost to the Ja­maicans, while em­ploy­ing a more de­fen­sive ap­proach for the en­counter. But de­spite a usu­al­ly slow start with the US tak­ing ear­ly con­trol of the match, it was the War­riors who should have drawn first blood.

Speedy strik­er Levi Gar­cia robbed his mark­er of the ball on the right side in the 10th minute, and he cen­tred for the on­com­ing Jo­evin Jones on the left side, who, with the goal at his mer­cy, could not con­trol his ef­fort and it went high and wide.

With the missed chance, Eve held his head in dis­gust and was fur­ther dis­gust­ed when a flu­ent build for the US team led to the open­er in the 14th minute.

Cris­t­ian Roldan re­leased to De­juan Jones on the left side, and the lat­ter quick­ly picked out Fer­reira to take nice­ly on the first touch be­fore slot­ting past Mar­vin Phillip for the 1-0 lead.

The goal opened the flood­gates for the US team, which was as­sist­ed by the War­riors' poor mark­ing in the de­fen­sive third. In the 38th minute, the US were two goals up when a nice­ly thread­ed ball to the feet of Ale­jan­dro Zen­de­jas was un­marked in­side the TT de­fence.

Zen­de­jas, in­stead of go­ing to­wards the goal, cen­tred for Fer­reira, whose ini­tial at­tempt was blocked by Phillips, but his sec­ond at­tempt took a de­flec­tion off Shel­don Bateau be­fore go­ing in.

By then, the US had tak­en to­tal con­trol of the match and were cred­it­ed with their third goal in the 45 min­utes.

Djord­je Mi­hailovic was the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of an­oth­er US through-ball in­side the T&T de­fence be­fore he was hacked down by Alvin Jones on the stroke of half­time, forc­ing the ref­er­ee to point to the penal­ty spot.

Fer­reira then stepped up and sent Phillip the wrong way for a 3-0 ad­van­tage for the USA at the break.

On the re­sump­tion, Eve made three changes to the team, bring­ing in An­dre Ram­per­sad, Shan­non Gomez and Re­al Gill to strength­en their at­tack, but still, it could not stem the flow of at­tacks at the T&T goal.

Gar­cia who tor­ment­ed the US de­fence for most of the night, was again the ar­chi­tect of a glar­ing T&T chance in the 55th minute, us­ing his speed down the right side be­fore pick­ing out the new-found Mal­colm Shaw in­side the box.

How­ev­er, Shaw could not take the ball un­der pres­sure from the US de­fend­ers.

Lat­er in the 62nd minute, Gomez got a sight at goal and he curled the ball on­to the US up­right, where goal­keep­er Matthew Turn­er was beat­en.

It was the to­tal op­po­site though in the 65th minute. Gill the guilty man of a poor back­pass to Phillip, saw it in­ter­cept­ed by Cow­ell, and the Amer­i­can turned past Phillip be­fore steer­ing the ball in­to an emp­ty net for a 4-0 lead.

Two more goals from the US team then com­plet­ed the de­mo­li­tion. An­oth­er smooth build-up down the right side saw Ju­lian Gres­sel cen­tred for the un­marked Bu­sio to take neat­ly and slot past the out­stretched arms of Phillip in the 79th minute.

And in the 90+4 min­utes, Vazquez was picked out be­hind the T&T de­fence and he calm­ly lift­ed the ball past Phillip to round off a 6-0.

TT TEAM

1 Mar­vin Phillip, 4 Shel­don Bateau, 5 Le­land Archer, 6 Luke Singh, 16 Alvin Jones, 18 Tris­ton Hodge, 3 Jo­evin Jones, 10 Kevin Moli­no, 11 Levi Gar­cia,

15 Ne­veal Hack­shaw, 19 Mal­colm Shaw

Subs

21 Nick­las Fren­derup, 22 Den­zil Smith, 2 Aubrey David, 7 Ryan Telfer, 14 Shan­non Gomez, 12 Ka­reem Moses, 8 Ajani For­tune, 13 Re­al Gill, 17 An­dre Ram­per­sad, 20 Kaile Au­vray, 23 Mo­lik Khan, 9 Kadeem Corbin

USA TEAM

1 Matthew Turn­er C, 5 Bryan Reynolds, 8 James Sands, 20 Jalen Neal, 12 Miles Robin­son, 15 De­juan Jones, 6 Gi­an­lu­ca Bu­sio, 10 Cris­t­ian Roldan, 14 Djord­je Mi­hailovic, 17 Ale­jan­dro Zen­de­jas, 9 Je­sus Fer­reira

Subs

18 Sean John­son, 23 Gabriel Sloni­na, 2 De­an­dre Yedlin, 21 John Tolkin, 3 Aaron Long, 4 Matt Mi­az­ga, 7 Alan Sono­ra, 22 Ju­lian Gres­sel, 11 Cade Cow­ell, 13 Jor­dan Mor­ris, 19 Bran­don Vazquez