T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League cham­pi­ons AC Port-of-Spain (AC PoS) bowed out of the 2024 CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Cup af­ter let­ting a 2-0 lead slip for the sec­ond time this sea­son in a 2-3 loss to vis­i­tors Cibao FC of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, on Tues­day (Sep­tem­ber 24) night. 

Go­ing in­to the match, the ‘Cap­i­tal City Boyz’ found them­selves in a must-win sit­u­a­tion with on­ly two points from three match­es in Group B, while Cibao FC had four points from two match­es, three be­hind lead­ers and fel­low Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic out­fit Cibao, who al­so de­feat­ed ASC PoS 3-2 af­ter trail­ing 2-0 at home on Au­gust 27. 

Af­ter an even­ly con­test­ed first 30 min­utes, Shack­iel Hen­ry head­ed AC PoS in­to the lead in the 38th when he met a whipped in left-sided cross from Jameel Nep­tune for his third of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Two min­utes lat­er, Nep­tune, the nephew of for­mer na­tion­al strik­er Cor­nell Glenn, ex­tend­ed the lead for the hosts to 2-0 with a left-foot­ed scis­sors kick fin­ish in­side the penal­ty area af­ter Cibao FC goal­keep­er Miguel Lloyd did well to keep out a Sedale McLean left-foot­ed ef­fort.

Three min­utes in­to the sec­ond half, McLean was de­nied once again from close range by Lloyd to keep his team in the match, and in the fifth minute, Herold Charles came off the bench to change the game with three as­sists to spur the Cibao come­back.

First, Charles pro­vid­ed the cor­ner kick for Juan Lopez to head home Cibao’s first item in the 63rd minute from a cor­ner to trim the lead to 2-1, while an­oth­er cor­ner from Charles in the 75th was head­ed home this time by Ri­val­do Cor­rea for the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic side, ty­ing the match at 2-2.

One minute from the end of reg­u­la­tion-time, Cor­rea struck the match-win­ning goal when he con­nect­ed in­side the penal­ty area on a through ball from Charles.

As a re­sult, Cibao FC se­cured the sec­ond berth to the semi­fi­nals by clinch­ing a top-two spot in the group with sev­en points from three match­es, the same as Mo­ca FC, while AC PoS end­ed its cam­paign with two points to bow out at the group stages for the sec­ond sea­son in a row af­ter mak­ing their de­but last sea­son.

Speak­ing at the post-match, Walt Nor­ie­ga, coach of AC PoS, hint­ed for a need by the T&TPFL or­gan­is­ers to look at a change in sched­ule for the stag­ing of lo­cal com­pe­ti­tion to co­in­cide with the run­ning of the CON­CA­CAF tour­na­ments to help the teams.

He said, “As a club, def­i­nite­ly we have to look at the fit­ness as­pect of our play­ers in the com­pe­ti­tion, as we did well for a cer­tain time pe­ri­od of the match, but fit­ness-wise, at this lev­el, we need to go up some gears again.”

“Hope­ful­ly, when the lo­cal league starts up and is run­ning, it can have foot­ball play­ing at the same time as these types of com­pe­ti­tions, which will be of help to our teams.”

Re­flect­ing on the match, which end­ed in a sec­ond 2-3 loss, a vis­i­bly de­ject­ed Nor­ie­ga said, ‘First half we did well, man­aged the game, opened up the spaces, and con­vert­ed our chances.

“But, in the sec­ond half, the set plays—I think we didn’t deal with the set play sit­u­a­tions prop­er­ly—and we con­ced­ed two goals, and it brought back life in­to their team, and once again the legs went in our guys, and we con­ced­ed the third one to kill off our op­por­tu­ni­ties,’ stat­ed Nor­ie­ga. 

Hav­ing al­ready sealed their spot in the semi­fi­nals, Cibao FC will play its fi­nal group stage en­counter by host­ing Haiti’s Oua­naminthe next Tues­day while Mo­ca is away to Grenades on the same day with first place in the group still up for grabs.

At the end of the two round-robin groups, the top two teams will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals, fol­lowed by the fi­nals of the sec­ond edi­tion of the re­gion­al cup com­pe­ti­tion, which serves as a qual­i­fi­er for the 2025 CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons Cup and crowns the Caribbean’s club cham­pi­on.

Last year, AC PoS en­dured a mis­er­able cam­paign on de­but in the tour­na­ment, fin­ish­ing bot­tom of their five-team round-robin Group A se­ries with a lone point from a 1-1 draw against fel­low T&T club De­fence Force to show in four match­es.

In their oth­er match­es, the ‘Cap­i­tal City Boyz’ were de­feat­ed 3-2 by the Gold­en Li­ons of Mar­tinique, 2-1 by Ja­maica’s Cav­a­lier FC, and 1-0 by the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s Mo­ca FC.