Trinidad and To­ba­go skip­per Khaleem Hy­land and his team­mates suf­fered a hu­mil­i­at­ing 6-0 de­feat to the Unit­ed States in their sec­ond Group D CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup match at the En­er­gy Field in Cleve­land, Ohio, Sat­ur­day night, a loss which end­ed their hopes of ad­vanc­ing to the next round.

In a game in which Hy­land was forced out due to in­jury in the first half, T&T were all at sea in de­fence as US de­fend­er Aaron Long (41st & 90th) and strik­er Gyasi Zardes (66th & 69th) bagged braces while Chris­t­ian Pulisic and Paul Ar­rio­la al­so found the net in the drub­bing - T&T's biggest loss in the tour­na­ment's his­to­ry.

Af­ter a first half in which they man­aged to hold off the ma­jor­i­ty of the ma­raud­ing US at­tacks, T&T still con­ced­ed a goal off the head of Long four min­utes be­fore the break. Off a free kick from the left flank, Pulisic found Long with a fine pass in­side the six-me­tre box and he rose to head past div­ing goalie Mar­vin Phillip. But this was on­ly a sign of things to come.

With Hy­land forced off the field in the first half and Kevin Moli­no com­ing in as his re­place­ment, T&T's de­fen­sive abil­i­ty suf­fered and the Amer­i­cans smelled blood on the re­sump­tion.

In a 10-minute span in which goal­keep­er Phillip seemed to be play­ing by him­self against the home team, Zardes grabbed a dou­ble in the 66th and 69th min­utes while Pulisic (73rd) helped pile on the em­bar­rass­ment be­fore Ar­rio­la (78th) made the score 5-0. Long then com­plet­ed his dou­ble on the stroke of full time as T&T sim­ply suc­cumbed.

In be­tween, the So­ca War­riors had a chance for a con­so­la­tion goal when Cordell Cato elud­ed three de­fend­ers on the right side and passed to team­mate Levi Gar­cia in the 61st minute. How­ev­er, with a gap­ing goal in front of him, Gar­cia's shot did not trou­ble US goalie Za­ck Stef­fen as it was high and wide.

Af­ter earn­ing some re­venge against T&T for the the 2-1 de­feat which dumped them out the 2018 FI­FA World Cup two years ago, the Amer­i­cans will now bat­tle Pana­ma, who beat Guyana 4-2 in the open­ing match Sat­ur­day, in their last game to see who will ad­vance as the Group D leader while T&T will play for pride in their fi­nal game against Guyana next week.

Score:

USA 6 (Aaron Long 41st & 90th, Gyasi Zardes 66th & 69th, Chris­t­ian Pulisic 73rd, Paul Ar­rio­la 78th) v T&T 0

Teams:

T&T: Mar­vin Phillip, Le­ston Paul, Daneil Cyrus, Aubrey David, Alvin Jones, Khaleem Hy­land (Kevin Moli­no 46), Ne­veal Hack­shaw, Levi Gar­cí¬a (Lester Pelti­er 76), Ke­van George, Cordell Cato, Nathan Lewis (Jo­evin Jones 68)

USA: Za­ck Stef­fen, Nick Li­ma (Reg­gie Can­non 88th), Walk­er Zim­mer­man, Aaron Long, Tim Ream, We­st­on McKen­nie, Michael Bradley, Chris­t­ian Pulisic, Tyler Boyd (Jor­dan Mor­ris 56), Gyasi Zardes (Joze Al­ti­dore 73), Paul Ar­rio­la