The emergency crisis caused the cancellation of a friendly match scheduled for Thursday between the national teams of Costa Rica participating in the World Cup and the national teams of Iraq due to the refusal of the Costa Rica national team to affix Iraqi stamps in the players’ passports. border between Iraq and Kuwait.
A statement released by the Costa Rica Federation said: “The team’s mission was on Wednesday evening by bus from Kuwait to Iraq and asked the Iraqi government not to stamp the players’ passports when entering the country, but the local border authorities refused to do so. So the team went back to their training camp in Kuwait.”
The statement added: “The match against Iraq has been cancelled. The agreement stipulated that passports should not be stamped when entering Iraq, but Iraqi passport authorities insisted on stamping passports and for this reason it was decided not to enter Iraq and cancel the match. “
The Costa Rican Football Federation explained that they were denied entry to Basra because their passports were supposed to have an Iraqi stamp, which would prevent them from other travel.
Costa Rica will travel to Qatar today, Friday, with World Cup matches starting on November 23 against Spain, then playing Japan, and the groups will end with Germany in the Group E matches of the tournament, which Qatar will host until December 18.
Costa Rica surpassed all expectations at the 2014 tournament in Brazil, topping a group of Italy, England and Uruguay before beating Greece in the round of 16.
