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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Soca Warriors let it slip with 1-1 tie

by

Walter Alibey
27 days ago
20250623
Saudi Arabia's Abdulelah Alamri, left, collides with Trinidad and Tobago's Levi Garcia during a Conccaf Gold Cup football match in Las Vegas, yesterday. The match ended in a 1-1 draw.

Saudi Arabia's Abdulelah Alamri, left, collides with Trinidad and Tobago's Levi Garcia during a Conccaf Gold Cup football match in Las Vegas, yesterday. The match ended in a 1-1 draw.

AP Photo

T&T’s So­ca War­riors just missed out on a spot in the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup Sun­day night (June 22) when they were held to a 1-1 tie by Sau­di Ara­bia in an en­thralling con­test at the Al­le­giant Sta­di­um in Las Ve­gas, USA.

Chas­ing a 10-year pe­ri­od in which T&T failed to come out of the group stage, the War­riors need­ed to win the match and hope that the Unit­ed States pre­vent­ed a vic­to­ry for Haiti in an­oth­er con­test that was played si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. But while the Haitians were beat­en 2-1 at the AT&T Sta­di­um in Ar­ling­ton, the So­ca War­riors let it slip af­ter lead­ing for most of the match.

Fac­ing crit­i­cisms that their play­ers went par­ty­ing amid the Gold Cup cam­paign, coach Dwight Yorke’s men drew first blood. New-found strik­er Dante Sealy scored one of the best goals of the tour­na­ment to push T&T ahead 1-0 in the 10th minute.

Sealy picked up the ball on the wide right, where no dan­ger seemed pos­si­ble. But then he cut in­side on his favourite left foot and struck a thun­der­ous shot that sailed in­to the top right cor­ner of goal­keep­er Nawaf Alaqi­di’s goal.

A minute lat­er, Sau­di Ara­bia missed a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty at the equalis­er. With T&T still, in a cel­e­bra­to­ry mood, Feras Al­brikan failed to di­rect his head­er on tar­get when the un­marked Ab­dul­rah­man Alobud picked him out per­fect­ly with a lift­ed ball in the 11th minute.

Alobud’s down­ward head­er bounced on the ground be­fore over the cross­bar.

The Saud­is who beat Haiti 1-0 but were held off by the Amer­i­cans by the same score­line, need­ed just a draw to ad­vance as the sec­ond-place team in the group, and al­though they en­joyed much of the pos­ses­sion in the ear­ly mo­ments, they failed to trou­ble Mar­vin Phillip in the T&T goal for the most part.

T&T’s fo­cus on their de­fen­sive struc­ture looked good for the first time in the tour­na­ment, and when they tran­si­tioned to at­tack, they looked even stronger, for which they should have been re­ward­ed in the 15th minute. Sealy, the scor­er of the first goal then turned provider, when he switched the ball from right to left where Kevin Moli­no picked up be­fore quick­ly lift­ing it over to the on­rush­ing Levi Gar­cia to con­nect one-time with his un­favoured right foot, but the Alaqi­di went low quick­ly to push it wide and main­tain the 1-0 score­line.

The Saud­is en­joyed the bet­ter of the pos­ses­sion, but it was coach Yorke who went to the half­time in­ter­val ahead for the first time, 1-0.

Up­on the re­turn from the break, the Saud­is set­tled quick­ly and may feel that they should have scored when Saud Ab­dul­hamid broke the T&T off­side trap on the far left from a long ball in the 52nd minute. Ab­dul­hamid, with on­ly Mar­vin Phillip in front of him in the penal­ty area, some­how pushed the ball wide.

But they would not be de­nied. The Saud­is were lat­er re­ward­ed for their per­sis­tence in the 59th minute af­ter Feras Al­brikan, who had been un­usu­al­ly qui­et all night, drove in from right to cen­tre with the ball and slipped it in­side the T&T penal­ty area for Al­shehri to hit a pow­er­ful shot that Phillip pushed on to the cross­bar.

And in the mad scram­ble to get the ball away, it rolled invit­ing­ly for Al­brikan to steer the ball in­to the emp­ty T&T net for the equalis­er 1-1.

This was fol­lowed by a pe­ri­od of sus­tained Sau­di dom­i­nance in which stout T&T de­fend­ing, cou­pled with luck, saved the So­ca War­riors. In the 71st minute, Ab­dul­rahim Alobud curled the ball on­to Phillip’s cross­bar with the T&T cus­to­di­an beat­en. And as the T&T de­fence strug­gled to get the ball out of their dan­ger area, Alobud then hit the ball to­ward an emp­ty T&T goal, on­ly for Justin Gar­cia to clear it off the goalline.

Gar­cia, who came in as a re­place­ment for the in­jured Shel­don Bateau, had a chance to res­cue T&T in time added on, but af­ter a ball was thread­ed to him in­side the Sau­di penal­ty area, Gar­cia hit the ball off the cross with on­ly the goalie to beat.

The re­sult meant the Saud­is ad­vanced to the quar­ter­fi­nals as the sec­ond-place team in the group.

Teams

T&T: 1 Mar­vin Phillip, 5 Justin Gar­cia, 6 An­dre Ray­mond, 8 Daniel Phillips, 10 Kevin Moli­no, 11 Levi Gar­cia, 15 Dante Sealy, 16 Alvin Jones, 17 Rio Car­dines, 18 An­dre Ram­per­sad, 20 Re­al Gill

Subs: 21 Jabari St Hillaire, 22 Den­zil Smith, 2 Dar­nell Hospedales, 3 Jo­evin Jones, 7 Stef­fen Yeates, 9 Nathaniel James, 12 Isa­iah Lea­cock, 19 Ajani For­tune, 23 Noah Pow­der, 24 Isa­iah Gar­cia, 26 Isa­iah Lee

SAU­DI ARA­BIA: 1 Nawaf Alaqi­di (GK), 4 Ab­d­ule­lah Alam­ri, 5 Ab­dul­lah Madu, 7 Mukhtar Sheik, 9 Feras Al­brikan, 11 Saleh Al­shehri (capt), 12 Saud Ab­dul­hamid, 15 Aiman Ahmed, 16 Ziyad Aljo­hani, 24 Ab­dul­rah­man Alobud

Subs: 21 Ab­dul­rah­man Al­san­bi (GK), 22 Ahmed Alka­s­sar, 2 Muhan­nad Al­shan­qi­ti, 6 Ali Al­has­san, 8 Mar­wan Al­sa­hafi, 10 Faisal Al­gham­di, 13 Nawaf Bu Washi, 17 Mo­hammed Bakor, 19 Tur­ki Alam­mar, 20 Ab­dul­lah Al Salem, 23 Ali Alas­mari, 25 Ham­mam Al Ham­ma­mi

WAR­RIORS

LET IT SLIP


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