Taiwan soccer officials and national squad’s English head coach Gary White yesterday sharply criticized Chinese-language Next Magazine, calling a three-part feature published on Tuesday about the alleged falsifying of a 2016 match result and resulting FIFA investigation as groundless accusations.
The Next report was “an absolute disgrace,” as there is basis to the accusations, which are unfair to the players who have worked very hard to improve Taiwan’s world ranking, White said at a news conference in Taipei.
Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) secretary-general Chen Wei-jen (陳威仁) said the story contained untrue information, and vowed to sue the online magazine and the author of the story for libel.
Photo: Lin Yueh-fu, Taipei Times
Citing information from soccer insiders and others, the article alleged that CTFA officials and coaches on both sides contrived to forge the match report for an international friendly against Guam on March 19, 2016, to show a 2-2 draw, when the actual score was a 3-2 win for Taiwan.
White was coaching the Guam team at the time.
The two teams had colluded to play for a draw so they could gain points for their international ranking, the article said.
It also said a three-person FIFA and Asian Football Confederation (AFC) delegation that visited Taiwan last month to assess the CTFA election had also been asked to investigate the fraudulent match report.
The author also said that CFTA and White had squandered most of the government’s NT$20 million (US$668,271 at the current exchange rate) budget for soccer development last year with very little results to show for it.
White had sought to earn points by beating weak teams from lower-ranked Asian nations, the article said.
Many Team Taiwan players showed up at the news conference, standing behind White and Chen in a show of support.
Chen and White said the article was completely wrong.
The CTFA boss presented copies of the official game report for the Guam match filed with FIFA and the AFC and other documents to support their position.
Chen also showed reporters a correspondent from in instant message app he had with FIFA officials, who said last month’s trip had been purely for the CTFA election and had nothing to do with the March 19, 2016, match report.
The official match documents showed the final score as 3-2 for Taiwan, Chen said, which meant there was no fraud.
White said he could not tolerate the accusation he had colluded to get a draw in the 2016 game.
“This is a very serious charge. It amounts to accusing people of manipulating the match result. It is an attack on the personal integrity of the coaches and players,” he said.
As for the allegations about wasting the government’s money, the budget for soccer development is actually very small for the nation the size of Taiwan, it is less than countries that have a lower ranking than Taiwan, and also less than some countries who rank ahead of Taiwan, he said.
His aim in working with Taiwanese soccer players had always been to make progress, to improve the team from where it was when he took it over, White said.
Players must have “soul” to play on the team, he said.
That meant S for sacrifice; O for ownership, taking responsibility, U for unity and playing as a team; and L for legacy, to leave a legacy for future generation of fans and players, he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,