Tobago

The goal the United States gave up two minutes before the end of its game with Trinidad and Tobago in May is beginning to loom large as an obstacle to U.S. hopes of qualifying for next year's 24-team World Cup finals. With six games left in the five-team, 20-game CONCACAF finals, it has come down to a three-team race for the two qualifying spots. Costa Rica is virtually guaranteed one of them, although it still is a hairbreadth away from mathematically clinching it. The United States and Trinidad are competing for the other.

Veterans Memorial Stadium is basically a high school football and track field - although a town worker thought she remembered a Charlie Daniels concert here a few years back. Behind one set of stands sits Beehive Field, home of the Eastern League's New Britain Red Sox. Yesterday, 10,561 people, a majority of them Guatemalans, gathered at the stadium to see the U.S. soccer team try to step out of the sport's own minor leagues and move on to the big time, the 1990 World Cup final round in Italy.

Unbeaten lightweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez won the World Boxing Council junior-welterweight crown at Inglewood, Calif., last night, when Roger Mayweather did not answer the bell for the 11th round. Mayweather, bleeding from a cut above his left eye, did not leave his stool to answer the bell for the 11th round. He later complained of stomach cramps. Chavez, the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Association lightweight champion from Mexico, improved to 63-0 with his 53d knockout.