Nigel Si­mon

Mid­field­er Liana Hinds' 80th minute goal earned host, the So­ca Princess­es a his­toric 2-1 win over Chile in their Group A open­er of the Fi­fa Un­der-17 Women's World Cup yes­ter­day. This was in the sec­ond-match of a dou­ble-head­er played be­fore a sea of 16,000-plus most­ly red-clad vo­cif­er­ous spec­ta­tors at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo. The hosts opened the scor­ing in the ninth minute through Di­ar­ra Sim­mons be­fore Hinds dou­bled the lead, on­ly for Chilean sub­sti­tute Iona Roth­feld to cut the deficit with sev­en min­utes re­main­ing.

In the day's first match, West Africans, Nige­ria got a dou­ble from Ngozi Obo­ki to stun de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Ko­rea DPR 3-2 . How­ev­er, the crowd which had heed­ed the call to sup­port the lo­cal girls in the hot and hu­mid con­di­tions came to see what the So­ca Princess­es, coached by Nor­we­gian Even Pellerud and led by US-born de­fend­er Lau­ren Schmidt, had to of­fer. And at the end of the 90 plus min­utes they were not dis­ap­point­ed as they wit­nessed a piece of his­to­ry. Nev­er be­fore had a T&T team com­pet­ed in a women's World Cup at any lev­el while nei­ther of the na­tion­al teams, men or women had man­aged a win at a Fi­fa World Cup Fi­nals tour­na­ment in five ap­pear­ances. These ap­pear­ances in­clud­ed the Un­der-17 men in 2001 (T&T) & 2007 (Ko­rea); Un­der-20 men in 1989 (Por­tu­gal) and 2009 (Egypt); and Ger­many 2006 with the So­ca War­riors.

T&T's best re­sults were a draw against Swe­den in Ger­many and a 0-0 re­sult with Paraguay in Egypt last year. Eight min­utes in­to yes­ter­day's con­test, T&T al­most took the lead when Kay­la Tay­lor just failed to keep down a div­ing head­er from a Bri­an­na Ryce pin­point per­fect cross on the left flank with her right foot. A minute lat­er, a long throw-in on the left side by Patrice Vin­cent was col­lect­ed on the thigh by lanky for­ward Di­ar­ra Sim­mons, be­fore she turned on Chile cap­tain, Leti­cia Tor­res and fired through the legs of goal­keep­er, Veron­i­ca Saez for a 1-0 lead. It was per­fect start for T&T who con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate with Hinds, Tay­lor and Ryce see­ing a lot of the ball. Chile came close to draw­ing lev­el twice.

So­ca Princess­es' sec­ond-half sub­sti­tutes, Jo-Marie Lewis, left and Khadisha Debe­sette are all smiles as they cel­e­brate team-mate Liana Hinds 80th minute goal which se­cured a 2-1 win over Chile in their Fi­fa Un­der-17 Women's World Group A open­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, yes­ter­day. Pho­to: An­tho­ny Har­ris.

First the im­pres­sive T&T goal­keep­er, Lin­fah Jones had to race off her line to block a weak ef­fort by Fran­cis­ca Mo­roso, while an un­marked Ya­nara Ae­do in­ex­plic­a­bly fired over­bar from Mo­roso's fol­low-up cross to leave T&T ahead af­ter 45 min­utes. On the re­sump­tion, Chile be­gan with a re­newed sense of spir­it but still found the well-or­gan­ised de­fen­sive quar­tet of cap­tain Lau­ren Schmidt, Rose Ba­hadurs­ingh, Vin­cent and Khadisha Debestte tough to breach. Coach Pellerud in­tro­duced Jo-Marie Lewis in the 63rd minute and sev­en min­utes af­ter her in­tro­duc­tion, the skil­ful Lewis had the ball in the back of the net af­ter some clever foot­work. How­ev­er her ef­fort was called back by ref­er­ee Gy­o­engyi Gaal of Hun­gary for a very soft foul on Chile's Nicole Corne­jo. Ten min­utes from full time, the home side col­lect­ed the clinch­ing goal when goal­keep­er Saez and her de­fend­ers were un­able to clear a an­oth­er dan­ger­ous cor­ner.

The ball fell to the un­marked Hinds who con­fi­dent­ly fired through a crowd of play­ers for a 2-0 ad­van­tage. The South Amer­i­cans did not drop their heads and in­stead pressed for a goal which even­tu­al­ly came when sub­sti­tute Iona Roth­feld, a 69th minute in­tro­duc­tion, ham­mered a shot from dis­tance that was too hot for Jones to han­dle. Lewis could have ex­tend­ed the win­ning mar­gin dur­ing in­jury time but her shot nar­row­ly cleared the cross­bar while at the oth­er end of the pitch, Chile's Ae­do al­most stole a point for her team but her ef­fort crashed against the cross bar be­fore it was cleared by Debe­sette to seal T&T's win. The re­sult was a per­fect be­gin­ning for the host na­tion who now face Nige­ria in their sec­ond match at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la on Wednes­day from 7 pm. Three hours ear­li­er, Chile and Ko­rea DPR will face off with a de­feat for ei­ther team end­ing their hopes of ad­vanc­ing to the quar­ter­fi­nals.

U-17 World Cup Glance

Yes­ter­day's Re­sults

Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um:

T&T 2 (D. Sim­mons 9, L. Hinds 80) vs Chile 1 (I. Roth­feld 83)

Nige­ria 3 (Oko­bi, 3, 79, Or­de­ga 77) vs Ko­rea 2 (Su Gy­ong 28, Kum Jong 58,

Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um:

Ger­many 9 (Lotzen 4, 5, Pe­ter­mann 12,13,72, Ma­li­nows­ki 42, 55, 66, De­mann 47) vs Mex­i­co 0

South Africa 1 (Seo­posen­we, 53) vs Ko­rea Re­pub­lic 3 (Yeo Min Ji, 37, 56, Damyeong 77)

To­day's Match­es

Ato Boldon Sta­di­um:

New Zealand vs Venezuela, 4 p.m

Spain vs Japan, 7 p.m

Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um:

Re­pub­lic of Ire­land vs Brazil, 4 p.m

Cana­da vs Ghana, 7 p.m