T&T’s hopes of a berth in the Un­der-17 Women’s World Cup were dashed on Wednes­day night when they went down 4-0 to El Sal­vador in their sec­ond match in Group C of the CON­CA­CAF Fi­nal Round Qual­i­fiers at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Af­ter go­ing down to the Unit­ed States 3-0 in a match that had ear­ly hopes of a point for the So­ca Princess­es on Mon­day, coach Ayan­na Rus­sell’s charges played an open match, need­ing to win the en­counter to be ei­ther a group win­ner or the best sec­ond-place fin­ish­er to seal a place in the fi­nal.

But they were pinned against a rag­ing El Sal­vado­ri­an team that dom­i­nat­ed the pro­ceed­ings in at­tacks. The El Sal­vado­ri­ans were held to a 1-1 tie by Hon­duras in the first game on Mon­day, and need­ing to win, they went for the ear­ly ad­van­tage when Maya Buerg­er elud­ed two de­fend­ers but saw her thump­ing shot sail just wide of the post in the 11th minute.

De­spite Rus­sell’s de­ci­sion to take a more at­tack­ing ap­proach to the first game against the USA, the So­ca Princess­es failed to of­fer any re­al fire­pow­er against the El Sal­vado­ri­an de­fence and found it dif­fi­cult to reach their op­po­nent’s goal area.

In the 35th minute, the usu­al­ly se­cure Kait­lyn Dar­went mis­tak­en­ly hand­ed the ball to an op­pos­ing play­er in the cen­tre of de­fence; still, the El Sal­vado­ri­ans did not cap­i­talise on the op­por­tu­ni­ty as Abi­gail Sal­ga­do’s shot sailed right in­to the safe grasp of Aimey in the T&T post.

The teams re­turned to the dress­ing room with the score at 0-0, and Buerg­er came close to break­ing the dead­lock when her loop­ing shot from the right side crashed against the cross­bar be­fore bounc­ing to safe­ty.

But the home team could do noth­ing when Sal­ga­do turned past two de­fend­ers from a throw-in on the right side in the 58th minute and un­leashed a thump­ing shot that sailed over Aimey for a 1-0 lead.

The goal seemed to have opened the flood­gates as the El Sal­vado­ri­ans in­ten­si­fied the pres­sure. In the 62nd, they dou­bled the goal tal­ly. This time Buerg­er played a one-two with Mak­e­na Zuk­er­an on top of the T&T penal­ty area be­fore she hit the ball low past the out­stretched arms of Aimey for a 2-0 ad­van­tage.

Aimey, though, would be blamed for the two oth­er El Sal­vador goals. From an An­drea Sar­avia free­kick that lacked ven­om, Aimey some­how let the ball through her grasp and in­to her own goal for a 3-0 mar­gin for the vis­i­tors in the 88th minute. And on the stroke of reg­u­la­tion time, Ang­ie Al­varen­ga struck a loop­ing shot that sailed over the out­stretched arms of Aimey for a 4-0 El Sal­vador vic­to­ry.

The So­ca Princess­es will next face Hon­duras on Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal day of com­pe­ti­tion from 7 pm, while the Amer­i­cans and El Sal­vador will clash from 5 pm.

T&T TEAM

1 Zaira Aimey (GK), 2 Kait­lyn Dar­went, 3 Hac­k­eemar Goodridge, 4 Diem Sealey, 6 Che­ri­na Steele, 8 Ty’kaiya Den­nis, 10 Orielle Mar­tin, 11 San­ni Wil­son, 12 Rori Git­tens, 15 Kani­ka Ro­driguez, 17 Mikaela Year­wood

Subs

7 Rashe­da Archer, 18 Ken­isha Tay­lor (GK), 21 Alex­ia Dol­land (GK), 5 Taya Williams, 9 Mia Lee Chong, 13 Zye­sha Potts, 14 Cher­ine Steele, 16 Madi­son Camp­bell, 19 Giu­liana Mey­er, 20 Jes­si­ca Nes­bitt,

EL SAL­VADOR

18 Jes­si­ca Sil­va (GK), 2 Zoe Cas­tro, 6 Karyme Para­da, 7 Maya Buerg­er, 8 Mak­e­na Zuk­er­an, 9 Ava Ro­driguez, 10 Ang­ie Alv­eren­ga, 12 An­drea Sar­avia, 14 Han­nah Hop­kins, 15 Cami­la Brow­er, 20 Abi­gail Sal­ga­do

Subs

1 Yvette Tor­res (GK), 21 Es­ther Quin­tanil­la (GK), 3 Elyssa Her­nan­dez, 4 Veron­i­ca Jimenez, 5 Machaela Loop­er, 11 Au­d­ri­na San­tos, 13 Jade Di­az, 17 Laila Pacheco, 19 Ar­i­ana Jones