Will Taiwan have a pro soccer league soon?

The country is baseball mad and only baseball.

The leaders of the country have worked almost exclusively on politics alone but never on sports development until recently.

There is talk of a semi-pro football league but the people there are always talking and never putting anything together. If I understand correctly, only two or three FIFA standard football grounds exists in the whole country.

 

Sports in general are not that big there, people just know baseball the most. But i think eventually there will be a soccer league because of the pop. and GDP.

 

But I heard Taiwanese Baseball league has also hit an all-time low with corruption, match fixing scandals and etc and now the league has only 4 teams? What's the situation like now?

Taiwan used to be a pretty good footballing nation in Asia back in the 60s along with Burma.

 

If I am not wrong the tickets are free for the EAFF semi-final tournament. People went in for free to see the new stadium and the game.

 

How is that even possible? The population is so small and even baseball only has 4 teams. Wikipedia says the average attendance is only 3K.

I don't know about the quality of your baseball league but if you got football in your country the quality will undoubtedly be very poor.

Better chance, all politics aside, in getting a Chinese super league franchise in Taiwan.

 

I'd easily assume this would be a great move. However I'm not all too certain about the politics between the two nations; we'd have to research more into it to see if either nation would even allow it to be discussed.

 

Currently typing this from Taipei and I agree with all of those who state that Taiwan is absolutely baseball mad. Taiwan does show some interest in basketball, especially the NBA, although they do also have a domestic league.

The issue isn't even that Taiwan doesn't have a domestic football league but that football doesn't even seem to exist here. There doesn't even seem to be an interest in the big European leagues, which leads me to conclude that interest in the sport is very, very low.

Anywhere else in Asia, you see tons of football jerseys around, whether for sale in stores or people wearing them. However, here you see more people wearing baseball jerseys than you would in the States. Sure, the Taiwanese baseball league has had some scandals but people here follow Major League Baseball in the same way that other Asian countries follow the Premiership or La Liga.

Last but not least is that Taipei's main football stadium is currently under redevelopment.

 

As far as I know, the only football stadium in Taiwan is the Chungshan stadium.

http://www.worldstadiums.com/stadium_pictures/asia/taiwan/taipei_chungshan.shtml

Is this the stadium that's currently being redeveloped? I wonder what the new stadium will look like. Do you have any pics? I'd love to see them as I'm a bit of a stadium-geek.

 

what about that one new stadium with solar panel roofs, it looked like a really nice stadium for football...

 

First of all, why is baseball popular in Taiwan? LOL.
I know the people of mainland China aren't interested in the sport at all.

 

Accoding to some sources, Taiwan was a part of Japan until 1945 and Japanese pro baseball league games used to be played there.

 

baseball was very popular in china during the ROC period (1911-1949

 

I heard that one school baseball team did very well once, then all the schools and everybody started playing baseball.

 

I don't think there is enough will in Taiwan for this to happen... it would be great though.

 

I think South China AA has no interest to join the Chinese league system as of today. HKFA chairman Brian Leung is hoping to get a HK team in the Jia League in 2011, but nothing concrete has come of it so far, no name, no coach, no players, no sponsors, nothing. In fact, he might not remain as HKFA chairman for much longer.

For a Taiwan team to join the Chinese league system, there will be enormous political hurdles to overcome. Taiwan considers itself independent from China and do not want to be a part of it in any form, cultural, sports...etc.

 

Dont see the point of a pro league, maybe they can set up a better system of amateur teams so the players can improve, its not up to the par of a pro league but a pro league requires some serious investment over a long period of time. There is no point to launch a league and then watch it fold in 4-5 years, probably does more harm than good.

 

I said it many times before on these forums and I think it is worth mentioning again, I think it will be wise for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brunei and Macau to join up and form a "South China Sea Super League". 2 teams from Taiwan, 4 teams each from HK and SG, 1 team from Brunei and 1 team from Macau will give us a 12 team pro league with proper home-away fixtures. It will be a great platform for soccer development in these countries/regions. All it needs is for the AFC and a promoter to see the benefit of it and award a few places in the ACL and AFC Cup to the top teams.

 

I don't know much about the Philippines. What is the status of their league? Do they have suitable stadiums?

Can they AFFORD to be competitive against the rather wealthy economies of SG, HK, Macau, Brunei and Taiwan? I think these economies can afford relatively higher player salaries.

Any good Filippino players could be lured away easily by the other 5 and I am not really comfortable with that. Also I doubt any Filippino club can afford quality foreign players to make them competitive.