The road got de­served­ly rocky for T&T Pre­mier League cham­pi­on De­fence Force in the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup af­ter just the first round at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day night.

​The “Army/Coast Guard/Civil­ian” com­bi­na­tion team looked noth­ing like the side that swept the League and First Cit­i­zens Knock­out ti­tles last sea­son, suc­cumb­ing to a hu­mil­i­at­ing 5-0 loss at the hands of Ma­jor League Soc­cer’s (MLS) Philadel­phia Union.

The De­vorn Jorsling-coached team now faces a Her­culean task to over­turn the re­sult when the sides meet for the re­turn leg at Sub­aru Park in Philadel­phia on Thurs­day. The 23-time na­tion­al cham­pi­ons had an ear­ly chance to rat­tle the vis­i­tors when Kathon St Hillaire latched on­to a through ball for a one-on-one with goal­keep­er An­drew Rick. How­ev­er, the mid­field­er watched in frus­tra­tion as his at­tempt was flicked wide by the Philadel­phia cus­to­di­an.

​The vis­i­tors soon as­sert­ed their dom­i­nance, con­trol­ling pos­ses­sion and launch­ing re­lent­less at­tacks. Their break­through came in the 28th minute when Tyrese Bai­ley need­less­ly sent Je­sus Bueno to the ground with an out­stretched leg. Mi­lan Ilos­ki stepped up in the 29th minute, curl­ing a su­perb strike past goal­keep­er Isa­iah Williams for the open­er.

There­after, it was one-way traf­fic for the MLS out­fit, with the mul­ti­ple-time lo­cal cham­pi­ons back­ing for most of the first pe­ri­od. Still, there was lit­tle to be done to pre­vent the Union from in­creas­ing its ad­van­tage. This time, from a steady build-up from right to left, which found Fran­cis West­field wide open on the left side. The lat­ter then de­liv­ered a pin­point cross for Ezekiel Al­ladoh to con­nect with a pow­er­ful head­er that forced it­self in­side the goal, al­though Williams got his hands to it in the 32nd minute.

​Trail­ing 2-0 at the half, De­fence Force of­fered lit­tle re­sis­tance. Ilos­ki, who tor­ment­ed the Army de­fen­sive struc­ture all night, near­ly made it 3-0 with a thun­der­ous shot that forced an ac­ro­bat­ic save from Williams. How­ev­er, Williams could do noth­ing in the 63rd minute when Ol­wethu Makanya head­ed pow­er­ful­ly home from a cor­ner that was put in by Ilos­ki for a 3-0 ad­van­tage. Sub­sti­tute Bruno Dami­ani com­plet­ed the rout with a brace that came with­in three min­utes.

First, he col­lect­ed nice­ly from a Ca­van Suil­li­van cen­tre from the left and hit the ball low past Williams for the first of his two goals and his team’s fourth goal in the 68th minute.

The oth­er goal put the game to bed in the 79th. De­fend­er Shel­don Bateau’s out­stretched leg caught Dami­ani in­side the goal area, forc­ing Grena­di­an ref­er­ee Re­on Radix to point to the penal­ty spot. Dami­ani then picked him­self up and drilled the ball past Williams for the vic­to­ry, which they will take back to Sub­aru Park next week.

How­ev­er, be­fore the game could have end­ed, mid­field­er Jo­evin Jones was red-card­ed for an aw­ful tack­le on Dami­ani in the 90th minute.