De­spite los­ing their open­ing match 4-0 to Uruguay at the on­go­ing Pan Amer­i­can Games on Mon­day at the CIBC Pan Am Hamil­ton Soc­cer Sta­di­um, T&T men's Un­der-23 foot­ball coach Zo­ran Vranes is back­ing his team to come back strong­ly in their re­main­ing match­es against Paraguay and Mex­i­co.

T&T found it dif­fi­cult to match their South Amer­i­can op­po­nents with Fabri­cia Duarte open­ing the scor­ing in the fifth minute af­ter goal­keep­er Javon Sam­ple failed to col­lect a cor­ner kick.

Uruguay dou­bled its lead in the 20th when Fed­eri­co Ric­ca head­ed home from a cor­ner be­fore Nico­las Al­bar­racin blast­ed past Sam­ple to put Uruguay 3-0 ahead on the half hour mark.

T&T was then re­duced to ten men in the 59th minute when Alvin Jones was is­sued a straight red card be­fore Bri­an Lozano com­plet­ed the rout with a free-kick strike in the 68th.

T&T got more in­to the match af­ter the break and start­ed to see a bit more of the ball but there was not much of­fer­ing to trou­ble Uruguay on the day.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, the Yu­gosla­vian-born Vranes con­ced­ed that his op­po­nents were too much over the 90 min­utes.

"We faced very strong op­po­nents and they very in­spired," Vranes said.

"Their team has a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence and with play­ers from the re­cent Fi­fa Un­der-20 World Cup and we were miss­ing some key play­ers like Kadeem Corbin and Run­dell Win­ches­ter, who are with the se­nior team at the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup.

But it was a good ex­er­cise be­cause these are the lev­el of match­es that will be good for the play­ers at this age.

"We are get­ting a good pe­ri­od to­geth­er here with the train­ing and of course these match­es will come in very good for us. Hope­ful­ly the team can grow and the play­ers will ben­e­fit from it. I ex­pect we will give a bet­ter show­ing in the next two match­es," Vranes added.

Paraguay and Mex­i­co drew 1-1 in the oth­er Group B game on Mon­day while Brazil de­feat­ed Cana­da 4-1 and Pana­ma beat Pe­ru 2-1 a day ear­li­er in Group A ac­tion.

T&T faces Paraguay on Fri­day from 8.35 pm fol­lowed by its fi­nal round-robin group match against Mex­i­co on Tues­day at 5.35 pm.

Teams

T&T: 18.Jo­van Sam­ple (GK); 2.Shan­non Gomez (Yel­low 88), 16.Alvin Jones (capt) [Red Card 59], 3.Mau­rice Ford (5.Dario Holmes 54th), 4.Je­sus Perez, 8.Tris­tan Hodge; 15.Neil Ben­jamin Jr. (17.Aikim An­drews 37th), 10.Du­ane Muck­ette (12.Xavier Ra­j­paul 73rd), 9.Nathaniel Gar­cia (Yel­low 69), 6.Ne­veal Hack­shaw; 13.Ri­car­do John.

Un­used sub­sti­tutes: 1.Mon­tell Joseph (GK), 7.Jo­mal Williams, 11.Shack­iel Hen­ry, 14.Je­lani Fe­lix.

Coach: Zo­ran Vranes.

Uruguay: - 1.Guiller­mo De Amores (GK); 2.Se­bas­t­ian Gor­ga (Yel­low 62) (4.Pao­lo Lemos 73rd), 3.Fed­eri­co Ric­ca, 5.Edgar­do Schetino (11.Juan Gon­za­lez 73rd), 6.Fabri­cio For­mil­iano (capt), 9.Ju­nior Arias, 10.Michael San­tos, 15.Fer­nan­do Gor­ri­aran, 16.Nico­las Al­bar­racin (7.Fa­cun­do Cas­tro 79th), 17.Math­ias Suarez, 18.Bri­an Lozano.

Coach: - Fabi�n Macha­do.

Ref­er­ee: - Os­car Rey­na (Guatemala).