Coach Liu’s trophy cabinet is cluttered. There are so many shiny accolades competing for space on the shelves, that the diminutive trainer struggles to remember them all.  Some stick out, though.

“This was an international tournament in the Netherlands,” he says. “We came second to a team from England.”

It is telling that this memory sticks out. In a 30-year career as the coach at Jianshan Elementary School, Liu Heng-liang coached soccer and futsal teams in various age brackets to victory in more than 35 competitions, including a slew of national tournaments. Several players have gone on to represent Taiwan’s men’s and women’s national teams.

For the village of Jianshan, an enclave of Toufen City in Miaoli County, which is known for — if anything — rice noodle production, this outsized achievement is certainly impressive. But having challenged for overseas honors makes Liu particularly proud.

“Think about the resources and player pool an English team can draw on,” he says. “If we were in the UK, almost every kid would be playing soccer.”

Since a brief heyday in the 1950s, when the Republic of China team lured top players from Hong Kong and won consecutive gold medals at the Asian Games, the men’s soccer side — now competing internationally as Chinese Taipei — has languished near the bottom of the global pecking order.

It is currently placed 174th among 210 teams in the official rankings from FIFA, the governing body for world soccer. Having lost all of its games in the final qualifying round, including a 6-1 hammering at home to Thailand in October, the team failed to reach the 2027 Asian Football Confederation Championship finals, continuing a 55-year absence from top-level tournament footy.

Following the bleak campaign, Coach Huang Che-ming resigned and was replaced in November by the Australian Matt Ross, who has held coaching roles across Europe and Asia, including a brief stint last year as manager of Nepal’s men’s national team.

Taiwan’s women have fared better. Having won three straight Asian Football Confederation (AFC) titles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, team Mulan, as it is informally known, qualified for this year’s tournament in Australia. This marked a second consecutive appearance for the team, after it missed the previous three events between 2010 and 2018.   

Struggling for direction

Overall, the state of soccer in Taiwan has been a source of consternation for fans, who have seen no signs of improvement for decades.

“The situation is dreadful, all the way to the national level,” says Liu. “The CTFA receives funding from the AFC, but the money seems to go on administration.”

Having retired three years ago, during which time the school’s success has noticeably dwindled, 67-year-old Liu still offers support to new generations of youngsters, though these days mainly in an advisory role to the new coach.

As head of Miaoli County Football Committee, he has a say — albeit limited — in the decision-making process of the Chinese Taipei Football Association, the governing body for soccer in Taiwan. Members of regional associations can cast votes in elections for the CTFA executive committee and chairperson.    

Despite cultivating successive generations of title-winning teams, collectively dubbed the “Liu family army,” he is modest about his role in his teams’ achievements, insisting that well-apportioned funding is crucial to grassroots development.

“If we hadn’t gotten the results, they never would have approved that,” he says. He is motioning out the window of his old office — the school’s dedicated “football classroom.” (The fact that such a small school has dedicated such a large space to one sport speaks volumes.) Out front is an artificial pitch, which was among the very first for a school in Taiwan when it was installed in 2010.

“When I first approached the authorities with a request for an artificial pitch, they just dismissed it,” he says. “It was only when we started winning that they took notice.”

This, he says, reveals the contradictory thinking that has stymied development of the game through successive administrations. “They demand improvements before investment, but how do you improve without support?” Liu asks. “Even now, after what we’ve achieved here, there is still no 11-aside pitch in Miaoli County,” he says. 

Some challenges lie beyond the CTFA’s ability to address, Liu acknowledges. Taiwan’s birthrate, which in 2025 dipped below South Korea’s to become the lowest in the world, is one example. When Liu began coaching at Jianshan in the early 1990s, the school had 1,400 students, about 10% of whom played soccer. Today, enrolment has fallen to 230, with an even smaller share involved in the sport.

Other problems Liu mentions are a lack of high-level sponsorship and inadequate infrastructure. As this year’s World Cup — jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico — approaches, Liu observes that Taiwanese companies such as Acer and HTC have previously sponsored the tournament, as well as the UEFA Champions League, Europe’s top-tier club competition. “But we can’t get them to invest here in Taiwan,” he says. 

Many of these same obstacles are noted by Michael Chandler, cofounder and senior coach at Master Football Academy (MFA), established as a youth training organization. Since 2014, the MFA has run the Victory League, which organizes divisions across age groups from U8 (under-8) to U19 level. In addition to Taipei, it now has nationwide districts in Taichung, Hsinchu, and Kaohsiung. In total, there are over 330 teams and more than 5,000 registered players, says Chandler.

“When we began, football was close to a desert outside the school system,” he says. “There were no structured weekend leagues, no clear development pathway, and limited opportunities for children to play consistently.”

League matches are generally played in a seven-a-side format. For the 2024–25 season, however, the Victory League introduced 11-a-side football at the U14 level to better support long-term player development.

“That growth naturally overlapped with the CTFA U15 Youth League, as many teams and players were participating in both competitions,” says Chandler. “Rather than compete for space in a developing football landscape, we built on ongoing conversations with the CTFA and chose collaboration over fragmentation.”

The result was the launch of the Taiwan Youth Football League this season, with a unified youth structure across three age categories — U14, U16, and U19.

Build it, and they will come

In the MFA’s early years, Chandler says, training took place wherever space could be found — on the few available pitches, in schoolyards and parks, and in other public areas. “But time and again, after investing energy into building programs in those spaces, we would be told we could no longer use them,” he recalls. “We would have to relocate, rebuild, and face the same challenge again.”

After years of searching and negotiations — during which several opportunities fell through — Chandler said the organization was fortunate to find landowners who understood and supported its goal of establishing a permanent home. Built from scratch on derelict land, the Volkswagen Football Park opened in 2019.

For the first few years, the pitch was natural grass, but northern Taiwan’s inclement weather drove the decision to convert to an all-weather turf field. “Frequent cancelations and maintenance cost us an average of four months every year of downtime,” says Chandler. “So, we fundraised for the conversion.”

Unveiled in December 2025, the new 3,600 m² surface features floodlighting for evening games; adjoining is a large fan-zone area that doubles as an event space for music festivals and corporate events.  

“Having our own facility was transformational,” says Chandler. “It is something no other club in Taipei currently has, and it represents years of resilience.”

Building a system from scratch

A lack of infrastructure has hampered Taiwan at the top level. Last year, the issue was laid bare when the New Zealand women’s national team canceled a closed-door training game and a full international friendly match against Mulan at Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, citing safety concerns over the shoddy pitch condition.

Research shows that female players are up to three times more likely to suffer anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries, and New Zealand Football (NZF) authorities were unwilling to expose the Football Ferns, as the team is known, to that risk despite last-ditch efforts by the CTFA to improve the surface.

“And Nanzih is pretty good, relatively speaking” says Chandler. “So that says a lot.”

In response to the debacle, Taiwan’s Sports Administration, since upgraded to a Ministry of Sports (MOS), withheld a NT$3 million (US$91,274) payment due to the CTFA for the games. Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao, who oversaw the administration, branded the incident a national disgrace. To compound matters, the NZF is now reportedly pursuing legal action against the CTFA for expenses and loss of earnings.

“They want us to cover all their costs,” says CTFA Vice President Chris Wang. “As the case is still ongoing, we can’t comment too much, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s reasonable.”

Allegations of financial irregularities and incompetence have perennially plagued the association, which. The CTFA was reportedly NT$100 million in debt when Wang Ling-hsiang, a former media executive, became chairman in March 2023. While Wang’s supporters emphasize that he managed to reduce the debt, mounting criticism over perceived mismanagement, a series of mini scandals, and the dire AFC qualifying campaign, ended with his resignation in November.  

Among the more embarrassing revelations has been the case of unpaid wages for referees and staff officiating and administrating at the 2025 CTFA Student Cup in Taitung in November. More than NT$1.3 million was owed to 80 individuals, who went public with their grievances in January after accusing the CTFA of ignoring their queries.  

CTFA Vice President Wang acknowledges there have been missteps but says the media has consistently overplayed the cases. “There were governance issues and a huge debt left by the previous administration,” says Wang. “But we worked hard to repay it.”

He also pushes back against the perception that the association has squandered the resources it receives from the MOS, the AFC, and FIFA. Between 2022 and 2024, the CTFA received NT$595.7 million (US$18.66 million) from the then-Sports Administration — the largest subsidy among Taiwan’s 44 sports associations. While precise figures for FIFA are unclear, the world body has disbursed up to US$1.4 million annually to the CTFA in recent years under its Forward 3.0 initiative and other funding programs.

As part of its AFC Enhance initiative, the Asian association provides annual stipends of US$125,000 to beneficiary member associations with annual turnover of less than US$5 million. The funds are earmarked for operational costs, though other channels for infrastructure funding also exist.

“This seems like a lot of money, but a lot of this is paid out directly” says Wang. Funding for the various divisions, including the top-level men’s Taiwan Football Premier League (TFPL) and the women’s Taiwan Mulan Football League, accounts for a substantial chunk, as do regional training centers and salaries for the national team’s coaching staff, says Wang.  “The media just sees the whole amount, but doesn’t understand these funds are already tied up,” he says.

Local journalists present a different view, arguing that some officials misallocate resources based on personal relationships with TFPL club owners. Reporter Oscar Chen gives an example of the FIFA Football for Schools (F4S) program, launched in Taiwan in 2024.  

“When they came to Taiwan to promote it, they donated 20,000 balls, and nearly 5,000 balls were taken by the owner of one club,” says Chen, who writes for the footy-focused website Go Goal. “Logically, these should belong to the association and be shared fairly; you can’t just misuse them.” 

Confirming what many had long suspected, the Control Yuan issued a report on March 14, which censured the CTFA for financial mismanagement and failing to provide adequate support for Taiwan’s national squads. 

Money, missteps, and missed chances

For some, the problem is an institutional conservatism that can be traced to the game’s close ties to the military during the martial law period under Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule.

“Despite its marginal status … football was appropriated as an extension of the military apparatus,” write Chen Tzu-hsuan and Alan Bairner in an article on the history and dynamics of the sport in Taiwan. Noting that the “KMT troika” of state, party, and military underpinned sporting life in Taiwan, Chen, a professor at National Taiwan Sport University, and Bairner, who has written extensively on the politicization of sport, highlight the “nationalistic role” soccer once played.

This view is echoed by Jason Pan, a journalist with almost 30 years’ experience covering Taiwan’s soccer scene. ‘They are still stuck in that authoritarian mentality,’ says Pan. ‘Fans have called for reform for decades, but it won’t happen, with these dinosaurs at the helm.’ As part of an effort to move away from the Sinicization of national symbols during the martial law era, Pan has spearheaded a campaign to have the nickname of the women’s team changed from “Mulan” to the “Blue Magpies.”

Still, most agree that an absence of world class venues has held Taiwan back. With sky-high property prices and little guarantee of returns, private investment will be almost impossible to attract for such projects, Wang says. Instead, substantial government support will be required.

He notes President Lai Ching-te’s commitment to encouraging sporting events through the allocation of a NT$20 billion budget to the MOS but stresses that building international-standard grounds is a must.  

“Every city needs at least one 5,000-seat football stadium,” he says. “If the government can build at least 10, then clubs in men’s league and women’s league can share their own stadium, making things more and more competitive.”

Chen agrees with this assessment but still insists that big business must be brought on board. “I once told [former CTFA President] Wang that if I were the chairman, I would try to invite these people to games as VIPs,” he says. “It’s about finding ways to get money from these wealthy people — that’s the only way.”

Back in his old office at Jianshan, this ambition seems a world away to Coach Liu. He looks forward to June’s World Cup with a tinge of regret at how far Taiwan remains from the soccer flagship event. “Baseball and basketball get much more attention,” he says. “But football has such a big global reach. It would help bring Taiwan to international audiences.”

Earlier this month, Taiwan’s women were doing just that, having made the quarterfinal of the AFC Asian Women’s Cup, where they lost to defending and nine-time champion China. Prior to the cross-strait matchup, team Mulan’s campaign was embroiled in controversy. During the deciding group match against India, former men’s national team coach and player Chen Kuei-jen was ejected from the Western Sydney Stadium for leading chants that contained the word “Taiwan.” While the CTFA refrained from direct criticism of the decision, Wang made the association’s feelings on the matter plain. ““Football is football. The focus should remain solely on the game itself: players’ skill, teamwork, fair competition, and the passion of supporters,” he said. “It should remain free from non-sporting influences that undermine its integrity.”