Japan scraps Jamaica friendly over virus test problem
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan’s football friendly against Jamaica was cancelled on Tuesday after 10 Jamaican players were unable to board their flight because of problems with their coronavirus tests, the Japan Football Association said.
Japan had been set to take on the Reggae Boyz in Sapporo on Thursday, in a warm-up for World Cup qualifiers against Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan this month.
But only half the Jamaican players arrived for the game, with 10 prevented from boarding a connecting flight over problems with “the method of pre-flight tests”, the JFA said.
JFA chairman Kozo Tashima said the governing body was investigating what went wrong.
Several overseas teams are set to arrive in Japan for international matches against the men’s and women’s sides this month.
“We need to be careful to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” Tashima told an online news conference.
“We’re asking experts for their opinion, and we’ll analyse that and find out what the problem was.”
The Jamaica team travelled to Japan in two groups, with one coming from the US and one from Europe.
Tashima said the Europe-based players — most of whom play in England — were prevented from boarding their connecting flight in Amsterdam when their negative test certificates were found to be “inadequate”.
Tashima said the exact details were not yet clear.
Japan’s borders are all but closed to foreign nationals, and those entering the country are subject to strict conditions.
Jamaica are also scheduled to play two more games in Japan, against Serbia on June 7 and Japan’s Olympic team on June 12. Neither of those games has been cancelled yet.
Japan’s national squad will now play Japan’s Olympic team in Sapporo on Thursday.
“Fortunately, we called up a large amount of players, so we can use this to see what condition the players are in,” said Tashima.
Japan is gearing up for the postponed Olympics in less than two months, with athletes arriving from around the world subject to strict virus rules.
Australia’s softball team became the first competitors to arrive for the Tokyo 2020 Games earlier Tuesday.
The delegation are all vaccinated but were still required to test negative before traveling to Japan and on arrival.
