T&T men’s futsal team bowed out of the 12-team CONCACAF Futsal Championship after a historic 11-1 loss to the Dominican Republic in a must-win match at Polideportivo Alexis Arguello in Managua, Nicaragua, on Monday.
Going into the contest, the Paul Decle-coached T&T men, beaten in their first two matches by USA 7-4, and then 5-3 against Guatemala, needed a win to have any chance of a top-three spot to advance to the quarterfinals.
However, with Che Benny, after his stellar display on Sunday, absent from the team roster due to two yellow cards in the previous two matches, T&T, beaten by the Dominican Republic 6-2 in their previous meeting in 2021, faced an uphill task.
Credit to the T&T players, they managed to hold their until the tenth minute before David Rondon scored the first of his beaver trick in the tenth minute to give the Dominican Republic the lead which was followed by items from Jose Belliard (13th), and Marco Gomez, a minute later from a 3-0 lead the end of the first 20-minutes half.
Any hopes of a T&T turning the match around in the second period quickly faded when Rondon (24th), and Belliard (25th) netted the second items of the match, and Hector Perez, his first in the 29th minute for a resounding 6-0 score line.
To their credit, T&T did not drop their heads and managed to get on the score sheet in the 30th minute thanks to Jameel Neptune, in his first bit of competitive football since suffering a broken foot against 1976 FC Phoenix playing AC Port-of-Spain in T&T Premier Football League late last year. Neptune scored from close range off a left-sided centre from Michel Poon-Angeron.
However, the Dominican Republic still had a lot in their tank offensively with Rondon completing his hat-trick in the 31st, while Guillermo Lopez (33rd), and Ricardo Alvarez (35th) also got in on the scoring before Rondon registered his fourth of the contest in the 39th, and Christian Gardelli, the final nail in T&T’s campaign with seconds left in the match.
With the 11-1 loss, it surpassed the 9-2 defeat T&T suffered to Cuba in 2008 in their second appearance at the competition, which up to yesterday was the team’s heaviest defeat.
In the day’s second match in Group C, Guatemala rallied from 3-0 down to earn a controversial 3-3 draw with the USA, to top the four-team pool with seven points, one more than the Dominican Republic while the USA finished third with four points and certain of a spot in the quarterfinals as one of two best third-placed teams to stay in the hunt for one of the four qualifying spots to the FIFA Futsal World Cup.
In Sunday’s late matches, in Group A defending champion Costa Rica defeated Suriname 3-1 for its second win while Mexico also won its second straight match 9-4 over Haiti, and in Group B, Panama outgunned Canada 7-3, while Nicaragua and Cuba drew 2-2.
At the end of the group stage last night, the group winners, runners-up, and the two best-place third-placed finishers will advance to the knockout stage.
The eight-team knockout stage will commence with the quarterfinals on Wednesday, followed by the semifinals (April 18), third-place match, and final on Saturday.
After the event, the top four finishers (semifinalists) will qualify for the FIFA Futsal World Cup Uzbekistan 2024.
At the 2021 Concacaf tournament held in Guatemala, T&T also failed to advance from their three-team round-robin pool after losing to Guatemala, 4-3, and debutants Dominican Republic, 6-2.
In their previous appearance, T&T was sixth on debut in 2004 after losing to Mexico 6-4 and Costa Rica 1-0 in pool play before beating Suriname 6-1 to end with a 1-2 record while in 2008, the T&T men finished seventh after losses in all three pool matches to Guatemala (5-0), Cuba (9-2), and Mexico (7-3), while they did not qualify in 2012, and 2016.
Costa Rica won the 2021 title, its fourth after beating USA 3-2 in the final, while Guatemala topped Panama 3-2 in extra-time with the top four nations representing the Confederation in the FIFA Futsal World Cup Lithuania 2021.