Skip to main content

Japan scraps night games after quake

The J-League also said matches in May would start by 4pm as Japan battles power shortages and planned blackouts to reduce the strain on the country's electricity grid.

The Japan Football Association (JFA) told Reuters the national team's elite J-Village training complex close to the stricken nuclear plant was to temporarily move south.

Japan's Kashima Antlers will play Yokohama F-Marinos in Tokyo when the J-League restarts on 23 April with their stadium (pictured before the quake) still undergoing repairs from quake damage, the league said.

The club's 2002 World Cup stadium could be unusable until the summer.

"It is a very difficult situation," J-League General Secretary Daisuke Nakanishi told Saturday's Japanese media. "It could take until June to fix."

In addition, this season's J-League Cup, scheduled to begin on 5 June, has been switched to a knockout format as a result of the disaster, the group stages being scrapped.