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JFA to terminate contract with SAMURAI BLUE coach Aguirre

03 February 2015

JFA to terminate contract with SAMURAI BLUE coach Aguirre

The Japan Football Association held a press conference on 3 February, regarding their contract with Japan men's national team head coach Javier Aguirre. JFA President Daini Kuniya and JFA Legal Committee Chairman Miyoshi Yutaka attended the press conference at the JFA House.
Here are the comments of president DAINI and message from Aguirre:

Comments from DAINI Kuniya, JFA President

The Japan Football Association confirmed from head coach Aguirre's lawyer at night of 2 February in Japan time on the fact that a court of inquiry in Valencia in Spain had accepted a charge from the prosecution on his alleged match-fixing.

Upon this report, the JFA assembled our executives of related divisions to hold a meeting and discussed on their plans regarding this matter. As a result, the JFA came to a conclusion to terminate our contract with head coach Aguirre, and informed head coach Aguirre afterward and he agreed on it. Along with that move, that JFA will also terminate coach Stuart GELLING, physical coach Juan IRIBARREN, and goalkeeper's coach Ricardo LOPEZ.

Regarding head coach Aguirre's managerial skills, although Japan came up short repeating the title in the AFC Asian Cup, the team's developments for the next FIFA World Cup in Russia have gone smoothly and we highly valued of his abilities. Also, many of the players and staff members have praised and respected his sincere attitudes and enthusiasm toward football and his personality, and we were certain that he was a top-level head coach globally.

However, as the charge was officially accepted, we had to consider the possibilities that head coach Aguirre was summoned and prosecuted in the future. As we have the World Cup Asian qualifier in June, it could affect the development of the Japan national team and as the JFA, we needed to eliminate the risks. And for head coach Aguirre, we think that it would be the best for him to protect his own credit and concentrate on potential criminal procedures to prove his own innocence. Because of all these reasons, we came to the extremely unfortunate conclusion to terminate his contract.

We the JFA would like to emphasize, as we have repeatedly explained, we have not confirmed a fact that coach Aguirre was involved in match-fixing, so it is not that we terminated his contract because of his involvement in match-fixing.

The next thing that we have got to do is to have new staff members in place, including a new head coach who's going to take the helm for the two games in the Kirin Challenge Cup and JAL Challenge Cup in March and for the FIFA World Cup qualifier in June. With our technical committee, we intend to concentrate our energies in selecting the new head coach and coaching staff.

Regarding this matter, we have caused anxieties to many of those who were concerned, including the fans and supporters, sponsors and others who are associated with us, and of course the players. We would like to express our deepest apologies on it. With that being said, we intend to examine the treatments on those in charge on this particular matter, including myself and executive members, and bring it up at the Executive Committee later.

In conclusion, we received a message from head coach Aguirre when we spoke to him. Although it was a short period, we would like to express our appreciation to head coach Aguirre and three other coaching staff, from the bottom of our heart for pouring their energies to develop Japanese football.

Message from Javier AGUIRRE, head coach of SAMURAI BLUE (Japan men's national team):
It's been my great pleasure for me to work in Japan.
I would like to express my appreciation to all the Japanese supporters for their support.
I wish the best of luck on the future of the Japan national team.

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