Taipei City Tatung were this week crowned champions of the nation’s top soccer competition, the MediaTek Intercity Football League, with two games to spare.
Undefeated after 10 wins and two draws, Tatung claimed the title ahead of Taipower and Taichung City Dragon, who both have 25 points.
In the 12th round of matches on Wednesday, Tatung had to settle for a 3-3 draw against National Sports Training Center (NSTC) at the Taipei Municipal Stadium, their opponents grabbing an 85th-minute equalizer when Huang Han-pi scored after a goalmouth scramble following a corner.
Photo courtesy of Chinese Taipei Football Association
Earlier Tatung’s Turkish forward Onur Dogan, a naturalized Taiwanese citizen, playing under his Chinese name, Chu En-le, got on the scoresheet. Married to a Taiwanese, Dogan has adjusted well to living and playing soccer in Taiwan, while learning the language.
According to reports, Dogan played professionally in Turkey for second-division club Dardanel Spor AS, and his experience and skills have contributed to Tatung’s success.
Tatung manager Chiang Mu-tsai said he was elated after a six-year wait for his players to land their second title.
“It’s normal for a team to have ups and downs. Usually the squad with the most complete lineup can sustain a strong run, but you also need luck. It’s rare to win the title with two rounds to spare in this league. The teams behind us had some problems and didn’t adjust well, while our players did an outstanding job to take all their opportunities,” Chiang said.
Second and third places are still up for grabs with two games left in the season. Ming Chuan University are currently fourth in the league with 17 points, behind Taipower and Taichung City.
Winless expat team Taipei City Dragons languish at the bottom of the table with three points from their 12 games.
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
The Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburg Penguins on Wednesday put a squeeze on the penalty box in Game 3 of their NHL playoff series — with 11 players cramped inside their designated punishment areas. Each could have snapped a team photo after a melee broke out in the second period of the Flyers’ 5-2 win over the Penguins in their Eastern Conference first-round series. “It was a party in there,” penalized Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler said. The celebration extended into the joyous locker room after the Flyers took a 3-0 series lead. Penguins forward Bryan Rust slammed Travis Konecny to the ice behind the
RSS