The wait was up to an hour, and for four Americans waiting at Chili's in Warner Village, a table in the bar area with access to a broadcast of live World Cup action wasn't a priority.
"I said it at the beginning, the World Cup is mostly a big letdown," said Taipei resident Les Arthur.
He was here mainly for the food, a triple-play appetizer combo and chicken Caesar salad, caring little about the match overhead featuring Argentina and Serbia and Montenegro.
Flummoxed
Arthur, a self-professed sucker for international sports tournaments, said he was flummoxed by how "falling down on purpose is part of the game."
Others at his table had a similar uninterest, mostly due to the nightly coverage, as well as lopsided early round matches.
Magnus, a Swedish national, was planning a trip to Hualien this week to get away from the World Cup.
"Sweden has never lost to England in 40 years, and now they were even smart enough to get our coach too," he said, referring to Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson, who has coached the English team in successive World Cup campaigns.
At half time, he walked out of a Netherlands-Ivory Coast match at Underworld, a small subterranean pub located on Shida Road where two dozen college-aged youths and a half-dozen foreigners watched a Chinese-language broadcast on an overhead projector.
A girl in white knee-socks was cheering throughout most of the first half, letting out a loud cheer or "Aiya" whenever a team threatened to score.
She admitted to having no particular favorite team, nor any opinion about this match nor any other World Cup competition for that matter.
Strong man legs
Floaty, an American who DJs at Underworld every Friday evening, guessed that women are attracted to the sport because they like to see men in shorts, or "strong man legs" as he described it.
He said most patrons to his bar cheered for the underdogs rather than supporting one specific team.
Floaty doesn't play music during World Cup matches, allowing for uninterrupted Chinese-language commentary, though he does spice up half time with selections like AC-DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and a little bit of scratching -- despite a broken right hand.
Even a recent Brazilian gathering at Bliss proved to be less spirited than the team's earlier opening round match.
Brazilian supporters arrived in taxis, carrying noisemakers and other soccer paraphernalia packed away in backpacks.
But the supporters seemed lethargic only two hours before kickoff, with just one woman demonstrating the required team spirit by scurrying about the bar ordering drinks in a gold lame headdress.
It was a big change from the opening round match for Brazil, a party which Bliss proprietor Barry Smit said ended at 6am.
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
For a second straight day, protests by La Liga players against staging a regular-season game in Miami, Florida, in December were censored or not fully broadcast for television audiences. The television feed of Barcelona’s home game against Girona switched right before kickoff to an exterior view of the stadium, which only showed part of the field from a distance. That impeded home audiences from seeing the teams’ players standing still for the first 15 seconds in opposition to La Liga’s plan to hold the Barcelona-Villarreal game across the Atlantic on Dec. 20. The broadcasts of the initial moments after kickoff of the
RSS