HOUS­TON – Ja­maica’s Reg­gae Girlz en­dured an­oth­er tough night on Tues­day, falling 4-0 to Mex­i­co at Shell En­er­gy Sta­di­um in Hous­ton, USA.

It was their sec­ond heavy de­feat in four days af­ter Sat­ur­day’s 3-0 loss as the Mex­i­cans wast­ed lit­tle time in as­sert­ing their dom­i­nance and pun­ish­ing Ja­maica with four first-half goals.

Liz­beth Ovalle broke the dead­lock in the 8th minute with a stun­ning fin­ish from a tight an­gle af­ter a cor­ner. The flood­gates opened soon af­ter, with Al­ice So­to net­ting twice, in the 11th and 24th min­utes, both from close-range strikes.

Scar­lett Cam­beros com­pound­ed Ja­maica’s mis­ery in the 18th minute, pounc­ing on a de­fen­sive er­ror to ri­fle a shot in­to the top cor­ner.

Head coach De­on Bur­ton made five changes at the break, in­tro­duc­ing fresh legs in­clud­ing for­wards Kameron Sim­monds and Ki­ki van Zan­ten, as well as de­fend­er Vyan Samp­son. The ad­just­ments paid off, with Ja­maica look­ing far more or­ga­nized and com­pet­i­tive af­ter the restart.

The Reg­gae Girlz cre­at­ed sev­er­al chances, with Van Zan­ten forc­ing a save from a head­ed ef­fort in the 66th minute af­ter a slick team move in­volv­ing Olu­fo­lasade Adamolekun.

Ear­li­er, Tru­di Carter blazed a left-foot­ed shot over the bar while Adamolekun and Shaneil Buck­ley test­ed Mex­i­co’s de­fense with long-range at­tempts. De­spite the im­proved dis­play, Ja­maica couldn’t find a con­so­la­tion goal.

Af­ter the match, Bur­ton ad­mit­ted his team’s dis­as­trous start cost them but praised their sec­ond-half re­silience.

“We showed char­ac­ter in the sec­ond half af­ter an­oth­er bad start to the game. We could have gone un­der, and they could have just not done what they did in the sec­ond half. So, cred­it to them for show­ing char­ac­ter and a bit of fight at the end.”

Bur­ton em­pha­sised that the learn­ings from the two friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­als will serve the team well go­ing for­ward.

“The over­all tour wasn’t a suc­cess, but it fin­ished on a pos­i­tive. I think we had lots of ter­ri­to­ry in the sec­ond half of this game, and we pres­sured and we pressed from the front and we caused Mex­i­co a lot of prob­lems. Just a lit­tle bit more qual­i­ty at the end and we maybe would have got a lot of goals. So that’s a pos­i­tive to take for­ward, and hope­ful­ly, when we come to camp again, we will start on the same foot and start with a bet­ter pur­pose.”

CMC