Japan FA President Kuniya Daini will take a voluntary 50% pay cut for four months "as a show of responsibility for the short-lived reign of scandal-tainted manager Javier Aguirre," according to Andrew McKirdy of the JAPAN TIMES. JFA Secretary General Hiromi Hara and Technical Dir Masahiro Shimoda will both take 30% pay cuts for the same period, "although Shimoda's offer to resign was rejected by the president." Aguirre was fired six months into the job last Tuesday "after a match-fixing case naming the Mexican as a defendant was accepted by a Spanish court." A meeting of the JFA exec on Thursday "exonerated all
three men for their role in Aguirre's July appointment, but Daini said
he and his colleagues felt the need to show contrition for the storm
that followed" (JAPAN TIMES, 2/12). KYODO's Shintaro Kano reported the board "discussed the way in which Aguirre was hired, the JFA's
response once the match-fixing reports implicating the Mexican came out
in September, and whether the termination of Aguirre's contract was
justified." JFA Chief Attorney Yutaka Miyoshi said that neither the three nor the
federation "could have done much more from a legal perspective throughout
the scandal that led to Aguirre's dismissal on Feb. 3." Miyoshi: "An integrity check is something that's very difficult to do. The president earlier said the JFA should have done more,
but I personally think it would have been difficult to do a check given
the information available at the time. You can't cancel contracts on the back of a whisper or a suspicion" (KYODO, 2/12).
