Trinidad and Tobago’s Under 17 Women’s team kicked off their two-match series with Canada’s Under 17 women’s team with a 3-0 loss at the Dwight Yorke Stadium, Bacolet on Thursday evening.
Both teams are preparing for the final round of CONCACAF qualifiers towards the 2012 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup in Azerbaijan.
Canada took a first half lead through Amandine Pierre-Louis and maintained that lead going into the break against a T&T team that played with a fully home-based team with several overseas players out through injury.
T&T kept pace with the visitors before conceding two further goals in the closing ten minutes. Valerie Sanderson netted in the 82nd minute and Nichelle Prince added the third item three minutes from full time.
T&T head coach Even Pellerud said afterwards that the exercise was quite a useful one for his team.
“It was a good preparation match for us despite the fact that we loss the goal by three goals,” Pellerud said.
“It was a good step up for the girls against a quality team like Canada. They are another leading country in women’s football. We held them well for much of the game until they scored first and then we conceded two goals late in the game.
“I was still very pleased with our performance against a Canada team that has been playing regularly over the past year. We used only home-based players today and I thought they did well. Of course we have a lot of work to do but we are working on this leading up the competition in Guatemala in May.
T&T will face Canada a second time at 5pm on Saturday at the Dwight Yorke Stadium following which the team then travels to Costa Rica for a training camp from April 5-15th and Fort Lauderdale on April 22 before heading to Guatemala.
T&T faces Mexico on May 3 in their opening match before taking on United States on May 5 and Bahamas two days later.
The group winners will face the runners-up from the other group in the semifinals on May 10, with the third-place and championship matches set for May 12. The semifinal winners and the winner of the third-place game will qualify for the U-17 Women's World Cup in Azerbaijan September 22-October 13.