J.K. Yao is a man with a vision: He wants to show Taiwanese that they can beat the best in the world at soccer.
However, what started off as an idea to host a soccer tournament and invite some of the region’s best youth teams has pretty much taken over his life in the past few months.
“A very special incident happened last summer … I hear there’s a middle school from Hualien, a middle-school team aged 15 beat the national team of the same age 7-2,” Yao told the Taipei Times in an interview on Tuesday. “The first question I had at the time I heard that was: ‘Why don’t we call that Hualien team the national team?’ And why bother to get all the so-called talent around the island and train them, and they get slaughtered by just one school team?”
Photo courtesy of Master Football Academy
Yao discovered the school team was the No. 1 under-15 team in Taiwan, but none of the players had been picked for the national team.
“That kind of made me curious to find out what happened in Taiwan’s football,” he said. “I finally found out the problem is that there have been, about four or five times, a Taiwanese U15 or U14 team [that] went to Europe [and] won a championship, but the Taiwanese senior team in the FIFA rankings is No. 176 [now No. 178]. Which is about dead last, because although there are 206 overall … if you look at the list … [those below Taiwan] are very small islands in the Pacific or Atlantic.”
“So the question I have … we have kids at 14 years old at No. 1 in the world … and then dead last at 22-years-old,” he said. “So [in] only eight years you can drop from No. 1 to last … what happened during that eight years?”
Photo courtesy of Master Football Academy
The upshot is the C33 International tournament to be held at the Taipei Municipal Stadium, next to the Taipei Arena, from Tuesday to Friday next week featuring a team of Aborigines, mainly from two schools in Hualien, and some of the under-14 sides of the region’s top teams — Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds, AFC Champions League winners in 2006-2007; South Korea’s Pohang Steelers, AFC Champions League winners in 2008-2009; and Shanghai Shenxin of the Chinese Super League.
“My intention with this tournament is to wake up the public. If your kids want to play baseball, parents will encourage them, because we have some [Taiwanese] playing in major league baseball,” Yao said. “If your kids want to play basketball … we have Jeremy Lin, so you won’t discourage your kids to do it. If your kids want to play football, the parents most likely, 100 percent, will say: ‘Definitely not,’ because nobody has been successful in Taiwan making a living from playing football. That’s a shame because we have wonderful kids … but right now we are dead last.”
A simple idea at the outset has become an all-enveloping task, after red tape and various other factors have seen the budget for the tournament increase from NT$3.6 million to NT$8.5 million (US$120,000 to US$283,000).
“I could have easily had a 2 million budget, take these kids to Europe and win another championship and come back, but I don’t want to do it. The reason why is I want to play at home … I want to play in front of the family in our living room, which is Taipei Stadium,” Yao said.
However, organizing a tournament designed to persuade Taiwanese that the nation can beat the region’s best teams has taken its toll.
“The first 10 weeks I have been through every kind of obstacle and difficulty, and I’ve been frightened, even life-threatening, you cannot imagine,” Yao said. “For the first 10 weeks that happened every single day, including weekends.”
“These [Aborigine] kids live in very poor conditions, which I am helping them with right now, including their dormitory. Their food, even just these four months food is NT$1 million,” he said. “The Aboriginal kids are living in very poor conditions — very, very poor.”
What started off as a way of showing how Taiwan can compete with the best at soccer has become more about helping the Aborigine kids themselves.
“Actually I’m not [now] doing this for football, on the surface it looks like Aboriginal football, but the real thing is I’m helping the Aborigines,” Yao said. “In the dormitory they don’t even have a table or chair to sit and have a meal. That has been sorted at one of the schools now.”
Putting together a side from two competing schools, which are only 15 minutes apart, has had its problems.
“When I first put the teams together, the two coaches weren’t talking to each other, even though they knew each other because they are always in competition, but right now all the kids are good friends and the two coaches are buddy-buddy, they are more than good friends,” Yao said. “If the result of the tournament doesn’t work out, at least I’ve made these two become friends.”
The first three days of the tournament start with an elite exhibition match between the Hualien C33 United Braves and one of Tawain’s top junior-high school teams at 3:30pm, before the main protaganists take part in the competition proper with matches kicking off at 5:30pm and 7:30pm. The final day starts at 3pm, with the final kicking off at 7pm, another example of how the original plan for the tournament has changed.
“Originally we selected 30 kids … and [planned to] cut down to 18 or something for the tournament … but during training we had a good relationship with the kids and they were working very hard, so I discussed with the coach that I wanted to keep them all, so we have the Warriors of 16 and another team of 14, because I didn’t want the kids to train with us for four-and-a-half months and come away with nothing,” Yao said.
Coach Dan Calvert of Master Football Academy and his assistant, Alan Murray, will be looking after the Warriors, while the two school coaches will take charge of the Braves’ matches.
Calvert praised his squad ahead of the tournament.
“On the whole the boys have been great and have been very receptive to what we are trying to teach them and the style of play we are trying to get them to adopt,” Calvert said. “The focus has been on developing their basic understanding of the different principles of defense and attack, and from this perspective all the lads have improved. I would say the most challenging aspect of the project has been to consistently motivate the boys to give their all in training.”
“At the end of the day, the players have all given up their summer vacation to be a part of this project and the regime has basically been what professional footballers would experience, if not more. The players train in the morning, then have a classroom session, before training again in the afternoon. These demands are hard for 13-year-old lads to handle, both physically and mentally. As mentioned, though, they should all be applauded for their efforts,” he said.
Although not having been able to scout the competition, Calvert is optimistic about next week’s challenge after 16 weeks of preparation.
“This is difficult to gauge, as I have not yet seen the other teams. That said, all three teams are from professional outfits and so it will undoubtedly be very tough,” he said. “The players are strong-willed and have been playing some great football in the friendlies over the past few weeks, winning four, drawing one and losing one against good older teams. This gives me confidence. I have faith in these boys and so I am cautiously optimistic.”
Yao advised those planning to attend the event, for which there is no entrance fee, to visit www.33football.org/EventT4.asp to order tickets, as they will then be entered in a daily free prize draw.
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