Brighton have discovered to their cost that intense global interest attached to every move and kick in the Premier League requires scrupulous attention to detail.
An educational project for school-age players, which began with victory in a competition organised by the league, has ended with Brighton issuing apologies to China and the club’s Japanese star Kaoru Mitoma after they unwittingly used an image of a controversial Second World War veteran for promotional purposes on social media.
A post on X by the club’s academy department showed Mitoma and an academy player holding mocked-up football cards that featured Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese soldier to surrender in the Second World War.
Onoda, officially declared dead in 1959, hid in a Philippine jungle for 29 years as he did not believe the war was over. He returned to Japan in 1974.