Taipei is to host minifootball teams from around Asia in a six-a-side tournament in November, with Taiwan competing as “Taiwan,” rather than “Chinese Taipei,” organizers said on Monday.
Sixteen national teams are to compete in the Asian Minifootball Championship Taiwan from Nov. 30 to Dec. 7 at soccer venues in the Taipei area, Formosa Football Association chairman Chen Huang-teng (陳湟滕) said.
As China is not a member of the Asian Minifootball Confederation (AMFC), there is no political pressure for Taiwan to compete as “Chinese Taipei” in the event, Chen told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
“After many years, this is the first time we can use ‘Taiwan’ at a domestically hosted international competition, and we will raise the national flag at match venues for Taiwanese fans to cheer,” he added.
Chen said the tournament was an opportunity to boost interest in soccer and minifootball in Taiwan.
He is also the general manager of the Taipei Vikings, who play in the Taiwan Challenge League, after spending last season in the top-tier Taiwan Football Premier League.
Minifootball, a six-a-side variation of soccer, is played on a field that is 46m to 50m long, much shorter than the more than 100m pitches used in soccer, and includes different rules from soccer and futsal.
“Minifootball has a fast pace, is played on a smaller pitch, is more exciting and quite suitable for local development. Taiwan faces a declining birthrate and fewer young people are playing sports, making the six-a-side game suitable for Taiwan,” Chen said.
Additionally, Taiwan has few proper soccer venues and not a lot of space for large sports stadiums, which minifootball does not require, he added.
The AMFC, which launched in 2020 and is headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has 26 member nations and is affiliated with the Switzerland-based World Minifootball Federation.
“We have the full input from Taiwan’s local minifootball organizations, and we believe it will be a successful tourney in Taiwan,” AMFC president Dato’ Worawi Makudi said in Taipei.
The confirmed participating teams are Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Maldives, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman and Iraq, officials said.
Chen and AMFC officials also unveiled the official logo for the championships, designed as a torch flame with a stylized design of the character “Tai” (台) for Taiwan.
The 16 teams are seeded into four groups in a round-robin format, with the winners from each group facing off, followed by the semi-finals and the championship match, to be held on the first weekend of December.
Organizers invited Taiwanese sports fans to attend the matches and learn about the sport.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS