Costa Rica soccer match suspended due to COVID-19

The Costa Rican Apertura 2020 Tournament will begin this weekend, but one match has already been suspended after two cases of COVID-19 were identified among one of the teams.

The Sporting San José match against Cartaginés was postponed after tests revealed that two members of the latter club have the new coronavirus.

“The Cartaginés leadership argued the situation as a case of force majeure following the two positive cases of COVID-19,” UNAFUT, the Union of First-Division Football Clubs, said in a statement.

The statement added that Cartaginés, which requested the suspension, is still waiting for the results of COVID-19 tests that were carried out on all the team’s players.

Costa Rica plans to hold an abbreviated version of its top-flight men’s soccer tournament to give the national team time to prepare for the CONCACAF qualifiers for the FIFA Men’s World Cup Qatar-2022.

The next La Sele match is a friendly against Mexico on Sept. 30, while the CONCACAF qualifying round-robin will begin in June 2021.

Costa Rican club matches are held without an audience and with other sanitary measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19 contagion.

UNAFUT successfully finished the Clausura 2020 in June, but coronavirus cases and deaths have since risen sharply. The Central American country has reported 26,129 infections and 272 deaths as of Thursday.