Tokyo Games 2020: is a ‘friendly’ match between Japan and South Korea a good testing ground for the Olympics?

Any sporting occasion that pits Japan against South Korea is a needle match – and the “friendly” game of football between the two nations in Yokohama on Thursday evening is likely to be anything but, for a whole host of reasons. There are also plenty of people questioning the wisdom of holding what is effectively a meaningless match at the height of a global health crisis. The last time the two nations played a friendly was in 2011, with Japan running out easy 3-0 winners on home soil. In the last decade, the two countries have met three times in the East Asian Football Federation Championship, with Korea winning two games and Japan once. The rivalry runs deep and neither will want to lose in east Asia’s bitterest footballing rivalry. Iranians query decision to host World Cup qualifiers in Bahrain “There’s no question that South Korea is our biggest rival,” says Tokyo-based football journalist Yoichi Igawa. “They are our immediate neighbour and they are pretty strong, but there’s the added problems that have cropped up in recent years.” Those “problems” include a flare-up in national feelings on both sides of the body of water that divides them – which is in itself a bone of contention. Japan refers to it as the Sea of Japan; Koreans want it to be known as the East Sea. Beyond that, the two sides are at loggerheads over the sovereignty of a rocky group of islands halfway between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. A unit of South Korean police are stationed on Dokdo, which Japan claims and refers to as Takeshima. In recent years, new tensions have arisen over the two countries’ shared histories, in particular events surrounding Japan’s invasion and often brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula in the early decades of the last century. South Koreans have filed a series of legal compensation suits against Japanese companies for being forced to perform labour before and during World War II, while similar suits are also pending for surviving “comfort women,” forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military. Gianni Infantino hails ‘strong’ Fifa as focus shifts to Asia “I used to see chanting between the fans in the past, booing of national anthems and banners in the stands, but I think it has got better in recent years,” said Igawa, who writes about football for the Japanese sport magazine Number. “I don’t think there has been so much hostility in recent years, perhaps because younger fans are more polite and there are always a lot of women among the Korean fans, but you never know,” he told the Post. Hong Kong vs China: ‘May 19 Incident’ that ended the World Cup dreams of ‘Big Brother’ The likelihood of clashes between fans is further reduced by the fact that very few South Korea fans will be able to attend the game as Japan’s borders remain closed due to the pandemic. The Japan Football Association is limiting fans to just 10,000 in the 72,327-seat International Stadium Yokohama, which was the venue for the final of the 2002 World Cup, with the away team likely to be limited to less than 1,000 tickets. For some, the game should never have been scheduled. When the Korean Football Association announced the match earlier in the month, it was inundated with critical comments, with many pointing out that when the team travelled to Austria in November for another friendly, seven players contracted the coronavirus, despite the team complying with strict coronavirus safety protocols. Nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition on the website of the Korean president’s Blue House calling for the game to be cancelled, accusing Japan of failing to cope with the outbreak of the coronavirus and using the event as a test for the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games. “Currently, there are many confirmed cases in Japan due to the authorities’ failure to cope with the coronavirus, with many cases occurring in Yokohama,” the petition states. “Perhaps Japan is trying to promote the idea that there is no problem with going ahead with the Olympics by hosting this match with Korea – but why should our players be used in this way?” Japan reported slightly more than 1,900 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, lifting the total number of infections above 460,000. To date, nearly 9,000 people have died in Japan. Igawa – who will not be attending the match – says the petition makes a valid point and he agrees that the game should not have been organised during a pandemic. “It’s a friendly and it does not have to go ahead at this point in time, but, on the other hand, the Olympics and the football World Cup are coming up, so the football authorities really do need to do something,” he said. “And yes, I do think they are using this as a test event for the Olympics as they want to build up confidence in the safety procedures that they have put in place and they want to show that sporting events can go ahead successfully,” he said. If the match does pass off safely and there is no spike in infections, then the organisers will indeed be able to point to this as evidence in favour of pushing ahead with the Olympics. The opposite outcome, however, could do serious damage to Japan’s Olympic dream.