With a combined age of more than 200 years, three soccer enthusiasts on Monday embarked on a seven-day journey around the nation to encourage more people to play the world’s most popular sport.
The trio — 76-year-old retired soccer coach Huang Wu-hsiung (黃武雄), 65-year-old coffee-shop owner Lin Chiang (林將) and 64-year-old interior designer Chen Li (陳立) — have co-authored a book titled “Fuleco: World Cup Nations” (Fuleco: 世界盃足球戰國誌), which was published last week. The dream they have in common is that Taiwan can host the FIFA World Cup finals in 2054.
On their journey, Lin is riding a cycle rickshaw, which has a large soccer ball on top, while Huang is using a wheelchair pushed by Chen.
Photo: Yu Tai-lang, Taipei Times
Lin said they hope the road trip will stir up people’s passion for soccer.
“We want to use about a week to travel around the nation, visit our friends and promote the World Cup. We want to encourage more people to play soccer because it is a wonderful thing,” Lin said.
Before opening a coffee shop in Hualien, Lin was a sports writer for several Chinese-language newspapers and was assigned to cover the FIFA World Cup finals several times. He also arranged a World Cup tour group in 1982, taking people to watch games in Madrid.
He said the soccer match between Taiwan and Japan in 1967 was the one he would never forget.
“At that time, the nation had yet to construct the North Link Railway,” he said. “I took off early in the morning to take a bus to Yilan’s Suao (蘇澳) from Hualien, from Suao I switched to a regular service train to Taipei. After I arrived in Taipei, I took a taxi to go to the stadium and I saw the game I would remember for the rest of my life.”
Huang, on the other hand, is the nation’s first internationally certified soccer coach and referee, and served as manager of the national team, as well as the Flying Camel (飛駝隊) of the Combined Logistics Command. The Flying Camel won the championship five times in the 1980s and 1990s.
Huang moved to Hualien three years ago due to an injury, and he befriended Lin and Chen. He said the three enjoy talking about soccer so much they decided to write a book together.
Aside from the development of soccer in Taiwan, the book also records some of the significant events affecting Taiwan’s participation in the World Cup. For example, Taiwan withdrew from the qualifiers for the 1958 World Cup finals due to the Taiwan Strait Crisis and the Artillery Bombardment of Kinmen on Aug. 23, 1958, even though the team were two-time Asian Cup champions.
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