An early Brian McBride goal was enough to give the United States a 1-0 victory over Trinidad and Tobago in a scrappy World Cup qualifier in East Hartford, Connecticut, on Wednesday that ended with both teams down to 10 men.
Cruising towards a berth in next year's finals in Germany, the result guarantees the US at least a fourth place finish in the six-nation group after moving onto 15 points from six games.
Mexico lead the standings on 16 points from the same number of games.
The top three countries qualify automatically for the finals, while the fourth-placed finisher meets the fifth-placed Asian nation in a two-leg playoff for a finals slot.
The home side took advantage of a flat Trinidad defence from the kickoff and with the game only two minutes old, Bobby Convey crossed to McBride in the middle of the penalty area, where the Fulham forward lashed home his 29th international goal.
Despite falling behind, the visitors seemed more intent on defending than searching for an equaliser and were also struggling with their control, unable to string more than two passes together.
"We deserved the three points," US coach Bruce Arena said. "We played well tonight, but we were guilty of making it a little difficult on ourselves. We created a number of clear goal-scoring opportunities and came up short."
Lacklustre finishing also prevented the US from adding to their lead with Oguchi Onyewu, Landon Donovan and Convey all guilty of missing golden opportunities to make it 2-0.
MAN ADVANTAGE
Trinidad were the first to have a player dismissed when defender Dennis Lawrence was shown a red card in the 41st minute for bringing down Donovan on the edge of the area.
Starting the second half with a man advantage, the home side continued to press for a second goal but Trinidad keeper Kelvin Jack pulled off a pair of great saves from Onyewu and McBride efforts to keep the scoreline down to a one-goal advantage.
"We were probably guilty of rushing our play sometimes," McBride said. "Instead of settling the ball down and trying to open them up that way."
At the other end, US goalkeeper Kasey Keller was not called on to make a save the entire night. He has not conceded a goal in qualifying for 417 minutes.
Convey was shown a second yellow card two minutes from time but the visitors were unable to mount a late challenge on the US goal.
"We made a lot of mistakes tonight and we needed 20 or 25 minutes to get in the game and to warm up our brains," Trinidad coach Leo Beenhakker said.
"I'm not happy".
In other group games, Mexico beat Costa Rica 2-0 and Guatemala overcame Panama 2-1.
