While soccer fans turn their attention to this year’s World Cup in South Africa, an elementary school soccer team in Kaohsiung is worried about whether it will be able to represent Taiwan at an international soccer tournament in August.
Chu Chin-hsiu (朱錦繡), a division director at Houjing Elementary School, told reporters yesterday that the school’s soccer team might not be able to attend the Hungary Soccer Kun Cup because of financial difficulties.
The team qualified for the international youth soccer tournament after winning the National Youth Soccer Tournament championship earlier this year.
Chu said the 32 players on the squad needed NT$2.5 million (US$77,000) to travel to Hungary, adding that the city’s Bureau of Education had granted the team about NT$1 million in subsidies.
The players and their parents have also spent holidays over the past three months making cookies, candy and cellphone accessories to generate extra money for the trip at a nearby night market.
So far, however, they have only made NT$90,000 from those sales, Chu said.
Although the school also received NT$290,000 in donations, there remains a NT$1.1 million gap, Chu said, urging local enterprises to give the team a hand.
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