{"id":524726,"date":"2026-07-14T00:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/524726\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T00:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:43:14","slug":"police-investigate-death-of-south-african-world-cup-footballer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/524726\/","title":{"rendered":"Police investigate death of South African World Cup footballer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police said they are investigating the death of South Africa World Cup footballer Jayden Adams, after his body was discovered this weekend at a property in the city of Cape Town.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old Adams died<\/a> two weeks after helping South Africa reach the knockout stage of a World Cup<\/a> for the first time.<\/p>\n

Authorities have not released a cause of death.<\/p>\n

“Cape Town central police registered an inquest for investigation following the discovery of the body of a 25-year-old male on Saturday,” police said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. \u201cCircumstances surrounding this incident are under investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police said the body was discovered at a property in the Cape Town neighbourhood of Schotsche Kloof at around 11am on Saturday (local time), but gave no more details.<\/p>\n

\"South<\/p>\n

South Africa’s Jayden Adams during the World Cup Group A match between Czechia and South Africa in Atlanta. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Adams’ father, Juanito Adams, told South African TV news station eNCA that the family were waiting for the results of an autopsy and had not yet made any funeral plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you all know, it was an untimely death. The family is struggling to process it,\u201d Juanito Adams said. \u201cIt won’t be easy to carry on. People say it will become easier, but it won’t. You just learn to live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams played in all three of South Africa’s group games as it produced its best performance at the World Cup. He did not feature in the 1-0 loss to Canada<\/a> in the round of 32 on June 28.<\/p>\n

South Africa Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie said Adams had played in his team’s group game against the Czechia hours after learning that his grandmother had died. McKenzie asked the public and media to \u201cexercise restraint and compassion\u201d and not speculate on the cause of Adams’ death while authorities conduct an investigation.<\/p>\n

There were moments of silence and tributes for Adams at the England vs Norway and Argentina vs Switzerland World Cup quarterfinal games.<\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, Oil prices spike as a US blockade looms \u2026 Terrorism charges laid over a political killing and a burglar ruffles feathers in Auckland. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police said they are investigating the death of South Africa World Cup footballer Jayden Adams, after his body…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[190,2966,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-524726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-africa","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}