T&T ‘So­ca War­riors’ de­fen­sive frail­ties were ex­posed once more as coach Dwight Yorke’s men suf­fered a 5-0 loss to host USA in their Group D open­er of the 2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup at San Jose Earth­quakes Sta­di­um in San Jose on Sun­day.

The ‘So­ca War­riors’ en­tered the match on the back of a 2-1 loss to Cos­ta Ri­ca in their sec­ond-round Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fi­er on Tues­day last but still ad­vanced to the fi­nal round, where they will face Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Haiti in Group B, while the last out­ing against the USA end­ed in a 2-1 home win on No­vem­ber 16, 2023.

How­ev­er, the Amer­i­cans, who crushed the So­ca War­riors 6-0 in their Con­ca­caf Gold Cup group meet­ing in 2023 and al­so reg­is­tered the same re­sult as in 2019 to add to three pre­vi­ous wins – a 2-0 win in June 2007, a 3-2 win in Jan­u­ary 1998 and a 2-1 win in June 1991 – were in no mood to suf­fer such an out­come once and took the game to the vis­i­tors from the first while.