Former champion San Juan Jabloteh of T&T and Dominican Republic outfit Cibao FC will contest the final of the 2017 Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Club Championship tomorrow evening at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Mucurapo from 8pm.
This after both teams topped their respective three-team round-robin groups at the same venue on Thursday night.
Winner of the competition in 2003 and runner-up three years later Jabloteh let a two-goal lead slip late on in a 2-2 draw with Jamaican champion and 2005 CFU winner Portmore United while Central FC, winner of the past two CFU competition stumbled to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Cibao.
In the night’s opener Jabloteh, which reached the CFU Club Championship finals as the best team of the first round group play earlier this year, looked well on its way for a fifth straight win of the campaign thanks to a 2-0 lead at the break.
Andre Reid, one of three former Portmore players in the local team, captain Damian Williams and Keithy Simpson, fired the Keith Jeffrey-coached San Juan club ahead from the penalty spot in the 34th minute after defender Kareem Manning bundled Vurlon Mills to the ground in a desperate attempt to clear a dangerous cross from Nathan Lewis.
Reid, the Jabloteh penalty specialist left Portmore goalkeeper Shaven Sean Paul anchored to the ground with his effort which nestled into bottom right bottom corner.
Mills then doubled the advantage in the 41st minute with a glancing header to beat Paul off a right side free-kick from Williams.
Sue Lae Mc Calla, who was replaced less than ten minutes after the break, had Portmore’s best attempt of the first-half with an ambitious strike from distance which whisked past goalkeeper Javon Sample’s top corner.
On the hour mark, Simpson had a chance to extend Jabloteh’s lead to 3-0, but he struck the upright with the goal at his mercy after
Lewis had initiated a counter-attack before he put through Kadeem Corbin into an vacant Portmore half with only goalkeeper Paul at his mercy.
Portmore got the all important third goal in the contest when Jeremie Lynch, who replaced Michael Binns beat Sample five minutes from time after meeting a pass from Cleon Pryce inside the 18-yard-box.
Then two minutes later Portmore captain Ewan Grandison drilled in a low shot into Sample’s bottom corner after making contact connecting with a Javon East cross to level the scores at 2-2.
However, Sample came up big for his team a few minutes later as he kept out a goal bound effort from Lynch that would have send the visitors into tomorrow’s final.
Portmore will enter the third place match against Central FC without the services of Manning after he was shown a second yellow card by Guyanese referee Sherwin Moore, for dissent just before the final while. It was a busy night for Morre overall as he had to dip into his pocket on five other occasions to issue yellow card to Portmore players.
With the drawn result, both Jabloteh and Portmore ended with four points each, however, Jabloteh which defeated Haiti’s Racing Fc 2-0 on Tuesday topped the table with a superior goal-difference of plus-two, to the Jamaicans’ plus-one.
Meanwhile, Central FC also went into its match needing only a draw to reach an unprecedented third straight CFU Club final, however Cibao’s Patrick Soko scored the decisive item eight minutes into the second-half half after host was reduced to ten men following’s Nathaniel Garcia dismissal for a second yellow card a minute from the break.
Cibao’s Argentine goalkeeper Juan Pablo Dominguez, one of three changes made by former Barcelona youth coach Albert Benaiges Sala for the clash, preserved his team’s lead on the night with a superb one-handed save, tipping over Central’s Sean De Silva’s attempt in the first half of the second game.
In the end, the result lifted Cibao to four points, one ahead of a lacklustre Central FC to top Group A while Antigua & Barbuda’s Grenades FC ended with a point.