Tim Chow, an 23-year-old English professional soccer player of Taiwanese descent, was on Monday granted a Republic of China (ROC) passport and might soon be ready to join the national team.
He will be eligible to join the team for the 2019 Asian Cup qualifier once the Asian Football Confederation approves the Chinese Taipei Football Association’s (CTFA) application to put him on its roster for a Nov. 14 match in Turkmenistan.
Chow, a midfielder for Scottish Premiership club Ross County, said he looks forward to joining the national team, as do his family.
Chow said his grandfather was born in China before the Chinese Civil War and lived in Shanghai before moving to Taiwan after World War II. He lived in Taiwan until emigrating to the UK in 1956.
Chow’s bloodline makes him eligible to obtain ROC citizenship in accordance with Taiwanese laws.
The CTFA established contact with him about four years ago, hoping to recruit him to boost the national team’s competitiveness.
He visited Taiwan for the first time this summer.
Chow was excited when talking about the team’s 2-1 Asian Cup qualification victory over Bahrain in Taipei on Oct. 10, one of Taiwan’s biggest soccer wins in recent memory.
Down 1-0 with time running out in the second half, Taiwan tied the game at the 90-minute mark on a goal by Chen Po-liang and won it on a goal in injury time by Chu En-le, keeping the team’s qualification hopes alive.
Taiwan is ranked third in the qualifying group, one point behind Bahrain and Turkmenistan with two games left.
A loss in Turkmenistan on Nov. 14 would likely knock it out of contention for one of the group’s top two spots and qualification for the 2019 tournament.
However, a win or a draw would boost its hopes with only a match at home against Singapore, who are in last place, left on the schedule.
Taiwan has not made an Asian Cup final round since 1968, when it finished fourth in a five-team tournament.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier