PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — For Joey Richardson, a 61-year-old retired civil servant known as Porche, watching his beloved men’s soccer team crush the United States was like watching David slaying Goliath.

Except that David was killed, too.

But maybe that didn’t matter.

“The revenge was sweet, even though we have not qualified for the World Cup game,” Mr. Richardson said.

Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation in the southern Caribbean, was abuzz on Wednesday with one of the strangest upsets in recent World Cup history: The previous night, it defeated the United States in a 2-1 qualifier game, which, along with simultaneous matches in Panama and Honduras, meant the Americans failed to reach the World Cup for the first time since 1986.

Compounding the oddness of it all was the Trinidad team really had nothing to play for. Its losing streak had been so bad that it had already lost any chance of going to Russia for the World Cup next year — leaving Mr. Richardson one of the few fans in the bleachers last night in a nation largely uninterested in the game.