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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Wobbly Warriors no match for plucky Peru in Lima

by

20160525

T&T's se­nior men's team suf­fered a 4-0 de­feat to Pe­ru in Mon­day's In­ter­na­tion­al Friend­ly at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional in Li­ma.

Tak­ing the field for the first of their three friend­lies over 11 days pe­ri­od, the "War­riors" were cap­tained by Bel­gium-based mid­field­er Khaleem Hy­land and in­clud­ed debu­tant de­fend­er Wes­lie John in a line up that list­ed Mar­vin Phillip in goal, with a back four of Daneil Cyrus, Aubrey David, Radan­fah Abu Bakr and John, mid­field­ers Sean De Sil­va, Hugh­tun Hec­tor, Levi Gar­cia and Le­ston Paul with Willis Plaza up front. Pe­ru had three debu­tants in their team, in­clud­ing PSV Eind­hoven for­ward Luis da Sil­va.

The 'War­riors" would have been sat­is­fied head­ing in­to the half-time break at score­less but they con­ced­ed cheap­ly with­in a four- minute span late in the half with Chris­t­ian Cue­va open­ing the scor­ing in the 36th and Da Sil­va dou­bling the ad­van­tage in the 40th to leave the hosts on a high be­fore a strong home crowd that came out to see their team pri­or to its Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cen­te­nario ap­pear­ance next month.

Mo­ments af­ter T&T went a whisker away from pulling a goal back when David's ef­fort struck the post, the hosts tripled their lead when Edi­son Flo­res pun­ished T&T at the back and hit past Phillip on his near right post. And a penal­ty was con­vert­ed by Cris­t­ian Be­navente in in­jury time.To break the score­less dead­lock in the first half, Cue­va beat Phillip with a down­ward head­er from Os­car Vilchez's right side cross.

Soon af­ter, Da Sil­va, slipped Abu Bakr be­fore clin­i­cal­ly hit­ting low past Phillip af­ter the T&T de­fence failed to suf­fi­cient­ly pres­sure the ball.

T&T's best chance at goal came in the 14th minute when Gar­cia beat two men on the left be­fore try­ing to chip the Pe­ru goal­keep­er but hit un­der the ball too much to send his ef­fort over the bar.

Hart made sev­er­al changes in the sec­ond half in­tro­duc­ing Shah­don Win­ches­ter and Tris­tan Hodge ear­ly. Both play­ers had de­cent mo­ments with Win­ches­ter just fail­ing to get off a shot on time af­ter mak­ing his way in­to the box. Mar­cus Joseph al­so came off the bench and had an ef­fort go wide of the near right post, while Cur­tis Gon­za­lez, An­dre Bou­caud and Jo­mal Williams al­so got play­ing time in the sec­ond half.

Both Hec­tor and Cyrus left the field with in­juries and Hart said he was un­able to say the ex­tend of it. T&T de­fend­er Yohance Mar­shall and Jabloteh for­ward Nathan Lewis were al­so un­able to take part due to in­juries and Abu Bakr will miss Fri­day's en­counter against Uruguay with the straight red.Hart said in his post-match com­ments that he was dis­pleased with the man­ner in which T&T suf­fered the loss.

"I think in the first half we were naive de­fen­sive­ly and even when we did win the ball we were giv­ing it away cheap­ly and putting our­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where we were con­stant­ly de­fend­ing which was tir­ing," Hart stat­ed.

"Over­all we strug­gled to deal with their pass­ing and their move­ment. All of their goals with the ex­cep­tion of the penal­ty were pre­ventable and we need to be bet­ter in all as­pects of the game to im­prove as we move on.

"In the sec­ond half with the sub­sti­tu­tions, we put the ball on the ground and we played a more pos­ses­sion game with short­er pass­ing. With a bit of luck we could have had a goal, but we were still out of the game phys­i­cal­ly and con­se­quent­ly men­tal­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly. We re­al­ly strug­gled at times to con­tain Pe­ru and we will need to fo­cus bet­ter in our oth­er match­es.

"We were los­ing the first and sec­ond balls and phys­i­cal­ly we looked out­matched but at the end of the day these games are an eval­u­a­tion of in­di­vid­u­als.

"In the first half far, too many in­di­vid­u­als were not per­form­ing up to the stan­dard but the sec­ond half saw a bet­ter per­for­mance. Un­for­tu­nate­ly we could have five play­ers out of the next game with in­jury and sus­pen­sion but we will re­group and pre­pare," Hart added.

Team doc­tor Ter­ence Bab­wah said Mar­shall and Lewis were nurs­ing ham­string strains with Cyrus suf­fer­ing a groin strain and Hec­tor a heel con­tu­sion. He said it was like­ly Hec­tor and Lewis would re­cov­er suf­fi­cient­ly in time for Fri­day's match.

T&T: Mar­vin Phillip; Daneil Cyrus (Tris­ton Hodge, 48'), Wes­lie John, Radan­fah Abu Bakr Aubrey David; Le­ston Paul (Jo­mal Williams 74'), Khaleem Hy­land, Hugh­tun Hec­tor (Mar­cus Joseph 67'), Willis Plaza (Shah­don Win­ches­ter 48'). Sean De Sil­va (An­dre Bou­caud 56'), Levi Gar­cia (Cur­tis Gon­za­les 86')

Pe­ru: Pe­dro Gallese; Al­ber­to Ro­driguez (Luis Abram,69'), Ren­zo Revore­do, Chris­t­ian Ramos Miguel Trau­co (Jair Ce­s­pedes 82'); Os­car Vilchez (Yoshi­mar Yorun 56'), Adan Bal­bin (Re­na­to Tapia 55); Chris­t­ian Cue­va, Luiz Da Sil­va, Edi­son Flo­res (Cris­t­ian Be­navente 57'); Ale­jan­dro Ho­hberg (Ar­man­do Alfageme 70')


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