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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Soca Warriors stumble in Gold Cup warm-up

by

Sports Desk
2226 days ago
20190612
TT midfielder Kevin Molino collects the ball and looks for teammate Joevin Jones, centre, who is being closely marked by a Canadian defender, during Monday’s international friendly match between the teams. Canada won the game 2-0.

TT midfielder Kevin Molino collects the ball and looks for teammate Joevin Jones, centre, who is being closely marked by a Canadian defender, during Monday’s international friendly match between the teams. Canada won the game 2-0.

Allan V. Crane

T&T con­ced­ed goals on ei­ther side of half­time in a 2-0 de­feat to Cana­da be­hind closed doors at the Ti­tan Sta­di­um in Cal State, Fuller­ton, USA on Mon­day evening. It was the team's fi­nal warm-up match ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup tour­na­ment which kicks-off in the Unit­ed States on Sat­ur­day.

Cana­da cap­tain Scott Arfield, who plays with Scot­land's Glas­gow Rangers, gave his team the lead with a per­fect­ly struck vol­ley in the 5th minute, be­fore he sealed the win with a 90th-minute strike.

T&T coach Den­nis Lawrence made sev­en changes to his start­ing team from the one that played in the 0-0 draw against Japan last week.

Min­neso­ta mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no was joined by Seat­tle Sounders' Jo­evin Jones, Akeem Humphrey, goal­keep­er Adri­an Fon­cette, Shah­don Win­ches­ter, Ne­veal Hack­shaw and Cordell Cato in Lawrence's team for the match.

T&T cre­at­ed a num­ber of chances and had on­ly them­selves to blame for not get­ting on the score­sheet. Win­ches­ter had two missed op­por­tu­ni­ties in the first half and Moli­no al­so squan­dered a clear-cut chance by di­rect­ing a right-foot­er over­bar from on top the penal­ty box be­fore the break.

Lat­er, Levi Gar­cia, who came on as a sec­ond-half sub­sti­tute, al­so fired one across the goal from a tight an­gle af­ter beat­ing his mark­er deep in the Cana­da penal­ty area.

T&T lost de­fend­er Car­lyle Mitchell in the first half due to a groin in­jury and Lawrence now hopes he will be ready for their open­er against Pana­ma on June 18.

In spite of the de­feat, Lawrence said there were pos­i­tives to take away from the match.

“I was very, very pleased with a lot of the as­pects,” Lawrence said.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed to con­cede two goals, one so ear­ly in the game and then one late, but in terms of a train­ing ex­er­cise for the boys, I thought it was very good for us. It gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to try dif­fer­ent play­ers be­cause we are still try­ing to find the right bal­ance."

Lawrence added, “I was a bit pleased, es­pe­cial­ly in the sec­ond half, with the way we man­aged the game. We got our­selves in a lot of good at­tack­ing sit­u­a­tions but again, we didn’t con­vert. All in all, it was a very pleas­ing ex­er­cise for us.”

Lawrence was, how­ev­er, hop­ing to use more play­ers in the match.

“I was just a bit dis­ap­point­ed with the way the rules were used. We were on­ly al­lowed to use six sub­sti­tu­tions and we were plan­ning to give every­body a game to­day. We want­ed to play some peo­ple for 45 min­utes but we were not able to do that to­day but all in all, it was a pret­ty good ex­er­cise for the boys," he said.

“It was im­por­tant for these boys. Moli­no last played on June 2, and Jo­evin has been com­ing on for his club since he got there. Greg Ran­jits­ingh has not been play­ing so we felt it was very im­por­tant that they got some min­utes. Moli­no man­aged to get through 90 min­utes which was good for us. Ran­jits­ingh, I thought did well when he came on and Jo­evin."


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