T&T So­ca War­riors' bid for a sec­ond FI­FA World Cup ap­pear­ance took a se­vere dent af­ter go­ing down to a 2-0 de­feat to host Ja­maica in their sec­ond Con­ca­caf Group B Fi­nal Round World Cup qual­i­fi­er at the Ja­maica Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, In­de­pen­dence Park, Kingston on Tues­day night.

Fol­low­ing a goal­less draw with Cu­ra­cao in their four-team home-and-away round-robin open­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, last Fri­day, the Dwight Yorke-coached So­ca War­riors found them­selves in a tough po­si­tion of hav­ing to go to Ja­maica and pick up a point on the road to avoid falling too far be­hind Ja­maica and even Cu­ra­cao, who faced Cu­ra­cao as well last night.

How­ev­er, af­ter an­oth­er ner­vous start from the So­ca War­riors, who even­tu­al­ly grew in­to the match, the vis­i­tors were un­done by two de­fen­sive laps­es, while at the oth­er end of the field, Rus­sia-based cap­tain on the night Levi Gar­cia had the du­bi­ous feat of hav­ing three goals ruled out for off­side, and right­ful­ly so.

With the win, the Ja­maicans, who trounced Bermu­da 4-0 away from home on Fri­day last, moved to a max­i­mum of six points from their two match­es, while Cu­ra­cao is sec­ond with four points af­ter a ner­vous 3-2 win at home over Bermu­da last night as well, ahead of the top two teams meet­ing on the next match day next month, with T&T third with on­ly a point ahead of their next match away to cel­lar-placed Bermu­da next month as well.

With on­ly two match­es gone, Yorke and his team now find them­selves hav­ing to win all four re­main­ing match­es to have a chance to qual­i­fy for next year's 48-team FI­FA World Cup to be joint­ly host­ed by the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

In ad­di­tion to Bermu­da (Oc­to­ber 10), T&T al­so plays away to Cu­ra­cao on Oc­to­ber 14 be­fore host­ing Ja­maica on No­vem­ber 13 and Bermu­da five days lat­er in their fi­nal two match­es.

At the end of the round-robin se­ries, the win­ner of each group will qual­i­fy di­rect­ly for the FI­FA World Cup 2026, while the two best sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers from Groups A, B and C will ad­vance to the FI­FA In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Play­off, sched­uled for March 2026, for a chance to se­cure a World Cup spot. For the first time in his­to­ry, the Con­ca­caf re­gion could be rep­re­sent­ed by as many as eight teams in a men’s FI­FA World Cup.

From the first whis­tle last night, the Reg­gae Boyz tar­get­ed T&T Eng­lish-born teenage right back Rio Car­dines, with the speedy Re­nal­do Cephas the main threat.

How­ev­er, when Cephas man­aged to get past Car­dines of the Eng­lish Pre­mier League's Crys­tal Palace, cen­tral de­fend­er Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham was there to make the move across to cut out any in­tend­ed dan­ger.

In the 20th minute, Trim­ming­ham's cen­tral de­fen­sive part­ner, USA-based Ko­bi Hen­ry, had T&T's first chance on goal when he got his head on the end of a loop­ing ball at the top of the six-yard box but was un­able to keep down his ef­fort, which sailed over Ja­maican goal­keep­er Jah­mai Waite's goal.

Five min­utes lat­er, T&T cap­tain Levi Gar­cia, who was qui­et up to that point, thought he had giv­en the So­ca War­riors the lead against the run when he latched on­to a through ball from Stef­fen Yeates, wrong-foot­ed de­fend­er Richard King and ri­fled home his ef­fort past Waite.

But un­for­tu­nate­ly for the So­ca War­riors and coach Dwight Yorke, who was jump­ing for joy when the ball went in, the play was ruled out for off­side af­ter a lengthy Video As­sis­tant Ref­er­ee (VAR) re­view.

Less than six min­utes lat­er and against the run of play, Ja­maica were gift­ed a chance to go one up, which they took when a bit of in­de­ci­sive de­fend­ing by Trim­ming­ham al­lowed Sheffield Unit­ed's Bai­ley Cadamar­teri to run on­to a head­ed ball be­fore he elud­ed de­fend­er Hen­ry and drilled a low right-foot­ed shot past goal­keep­er Den­zil Smith for a 1-0 lead.

De­spite falling be­hind, the So­ca War­riors nev­er dropped their heads and al­most pulled lev­el on the stroke of half-time when a shot by Sealy on the right first post forced a re­flex save from Waite to keep his team ahead at the in­ter­val.

On the re­sump­tion, T&T start­ed bright­ly and pinned Ja­maica back, cre­at­ing a few ner­vous mo­ments for the host, but was un­able to get back on lev­el terms with Ja­maica coach Steve Mc­Claren be­ing forced to fresh­en up his mid­field with the in­tro­duc­tion of Karoy An­der­son and Ka­heim Nixon for Kasey Palmer and Tyreece, re­spec­tive­ly.

In the 57th minute, an­oth­er bit of calami­tous de­fend­ing saw Ja­maica dou­ble their lead when Hen­ry in­ad­ver­tent­ly head­ed his at­tempt­ed clear­ance in­to the path of Barns­ley's Jonathan Rus­sell, who slot­ted past Smith for a 2-0 lead and his fifth goal in 13 ap­pear­ances for the Reg­gae Boyz.

Six min­utes lat­er, Gar­cia again net­ted from a feed by Stef­fen Yeates af­ter An­dre Ram­per­sad robbed a Ja­maica de­fend­er of the ball, but once again the T&T cap­tain's ef­fort was waived off for off­side from an­oth­er VAR re­view.

With his team's World Cup cam­paign al­ready in dan­ger of falling apart, Yorke turned to his bench and in­tro­duced Ryan Telfer and Nathaniel James at the ex­pense of Yeates and Sealy with the hope of get­ting back in­to the con­test.

How­ev­er, it was Ja­maica who al­most added to their two-goal cush­ion with an­oth­er sub­sti­tute, Shamar Nichol­son, hav­ing his ef­fort guid­ed be­hind by a re­treat­ing Trim­ming­ham for a cor­ner.

In the end, T&T's chal­lenge fad­ed out in the end, with the Ja­maicans ex­tend­ing their un­beat­en run to six match­es against T&T in their re­cent meet­ings, while the vis­i­tors fin­ished their first two match­es of the cam­paign with­out a goal to show and win­less in their last six match­es as well, with the last com­ing at home over St Kitts & Nevis, 6-2, in the pre­vi­ous round of qual­i­fiers.

TUES­DAY'S RE­SULTS

Ja­maica 2 (Bai­ley Cadamar­teri 35th, Jonathan Rus­sell 57th) vs T&T 0

Cu­ra­ca0 3 (Tahith Chong 14th, 26th, Tyrese Noslin 75th) vs Bermu­da 2 (Kane Crichlow 35th, Djair Parfitt-Williams 42nd)

TEAMSS

T&T: 22.Den­zil Smith (GK); 19.Rio Car­dines, 5.Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham, 3.Ko­bi Hen­ry, 23.Noah Pow­der; 14, Wayne Fred­er­ick II (6, Jer­ren Jack­ie 74th), 18.An­dre Ram­per­sad; 7. Stef­fen Yeates (9.Nathaniel James 64th), 15.Dante Sealy (12. Ryan Telfer 64th), 11.Levi Gar­cia (capt) (16. Justin Obik­wu 74th), 13.Tyrese Spicer (20. Kaile Au­vray 74th).

Subs not used : 1.Mar­vin Phillip (GK), 21.Jabari St Hillaire (GK), 2.Dar­nell Hospedales, 4.Isa­iah Gar­cia, 8. An­dre Ray­mond, 10. Re­al Gill, 17.Justin Gar­cia.

Coach: Dwight Yorke.

Ja­maica: 23. Jah­mali Waite (GK), 2. Dex­ter Lam­bik­isa, 6. Richard King, 7. Tyreece Camp­bell (10. Ka­heim Dixon 7th), 8. Kasey Palmer (15. Karoy An­der­son 52nd), 12. Bai­ley Cadamar­teri (11. Shamar Nichol­son 74th), 14. Isaac Hay­den, 17. Dami­an Lowe (capt), 18. Jonathan Rus­sell (19. Jahshaun An­glin 76th), 20. Re­nal­do Cephas (4. Ma­son Hol­gate 80th), 22. Gre­go­ry Leigh.

Subs not used: 1, Ta­fari Cham­bers, 13. Shaquan Davis, 3. Kevon Lam­bert, 5. Jamoi Topey, 9. Michail An­to­nio, 16.Kyle Dun­can, 21. Ronal­do Web­ster.

Coach: Steve Mc Claren

Cur­rent Con­ca­caf Group B Fi­nal Round stand­ings:

Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

Ja­maica*2*2*0*0*6*0*6

Cu­ra­cao*2*1*1*0*3*2*4

T&T*2*0*1*1*0*2*1

Bermu­da*2*0*1*1*2*7*1