Political Center / Reported by Huang Yunxuan
The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is drawing to a close. The first four games will be between Argentina and Croatia, and France and Morocco. Football is still at the bottom of the world rankings. Former President Chen Shui-bian has complained that Taiwan football still has a long way to go when one of his policies has been against it.
▲ In 2006, Chen Shui-bian shouted “a football dream in ten years” and opposed it. (Picture / Taken from Chen Shuibian Xinyongge Facebook Story)
According to FIFA’s official website, Taiwan’s world ranking in 2002 was 172. Now that 20 years have passed, Taiwan’s world ranking in 2022 is 157. Even if every World Cup kicks off a football boom, it can just help other countries cheer.
Former President Chen Shui-bian said he published the article “Football Dream Comes True in Ten Years” in the “President A-Bian Newsletter” in 2006, suggesting that “the government should select 20 children under the age to 10-year-olds with excellent physical fitness, and each provide 10,000 US dollars in public funds per year, and sent to Brazil’s best football school for 10 years of training.
Chen Shui-bian bluntly stated, “The total funding will not exceed 2 million US dollars. After graduation, I will help win the world’s best professional football team. The goal is to get Taiwan into the top 32 to the world in 2018 and make it famous at the World Cup”. However, at the time, the claim was rejected on the basis of “harm to the physical and mental development of children”. Chen Shui-bian lamented: “Today, Japan and South Korea can compete, and Taiwan Football is still far away.”
