Taiwan’s Taipower FC and Tatung FC are to play for club glory in the East Asia qualifiers for next year’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup, soccer officials said.
Kaohsiung-based Taipower and Taipei-based Tatung qualified for the tournament under new format changes approved by AFC members and executives, as the two clubs last season finished first and second in the nation’s top-tier Intercity League, Chinese Taipei Football Association secretary-general Chen Wei-jen said.
“They will compete under the revamped AFC Cup format,” Chen said.
“It is a historic first for Taiwan’s soccer clubs,” he added.
Taiwanese teams played in the tournament under its previous format, but only after teams from other nations dropped out of the competition, sometimes because of financial issues, he said.
Chen, as an official delegate of the nation’s soccer body, attended an AFC meeting earlier this month at the confederation’s headquarters in Malaysia, where the new formats for Asian national and club championships were discussed and approved.
“Taiwanese sports fans can celebrate that the AFC and major Asian soccer powers have officially recognized the Intercity League as a top-tier circuit. The winners and runners-up of the competition will now be eligible for the cup, one in the preliminary round and one in the group round,” Chen told the Taipei Times.
While the cup ranks second to the AFC Champions League, that Taiwan secured the berths is nevertheless a major breakthrough for the nation’s soccer development and was the result of the collective efforts of Taiwanese fans and players, who bolstered the nation’s rankings in both men’s and women’s soccer over the past few years, he said.
Intercity League runners-up Tatung are to face Ulan Bator’s Erchim FC, this year’s Mongolian National Premier League champions, in a home-and-away series on Jan. 31 and Feb. 7.
The winner of the series will advance to play Kigwancha SC, who finished second in North Korea’s DPR Korea League, on Feb. 21 and Feb. 28.
Both matches against Erchim might be played in Kaohsiung, as winter has Mongolia in its grip, with thick snow and temperatures of minus-20°C making play difficult in the landlocked country, which does not have an indoor soccer stadium, Chen said, citing conversations with Mongolian officials at the AFC meeting.
“We are negotiating with Erchim and AFC representatives, offering terms for both matches to take place in Taiwan,” Chen said. “The games would likely take place at the Kaohsiung National Stadium, as northern Taiwan can be cold and rainy in winter, while the south is mostly dry and warm in January and February.”
“Otherwise, the away match could take place in a third-party country,” he added.
The winner of the series against Kigwancha would advance to East Asia Group I, in which Intercity League champions Taipower, Guam’s Rovers FC and North Korea’s April 25 SC are also to compete.
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
Jannik Sinner continued his quest to become the first man in history to win five Masters 1000 tournaments in a row with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Danish qualifier Elmer Moller at the Madrid Open on Sunday. The world leader extended his winning streak to 19 matches, a run that began early March in Indian Wells, and he has captured 24 consecutive victories at the Masters 1000 level, dating back to the Paris Masters last October. Searching for a maiden title at this level on clay, Sinner advanced to the round of 16 at the Caja Magica with a 77-minute performance against
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
RSS