Taipei: Football is the most popular sport in the world, but in Taiwan it struggles to command the attention enjoyed by other sports. Baseball has its 2024 WBSC Premier12 title, badminton, propelled for years by former world No. 1 Tai Tzu-ying, regularly captures national attention, and basketball dominates arenas and sports talk shows. In contrast, football is rarely part of the conversation. However, before the FIFA Women's World Cup was inaugurated in 1991, Taipei was once at the pinnacle of women's football.
According to Focus Taiwan, football was once considered one of Taiwan's earliest "national sports" alongside basketball after the Republic of China (ROC) government relocated to Taiwan in 1949. In the 1950s and 1960s, the ROC men's national team, bolstered by elite Hong Kong players known as the "Hong Kong boots," won gold medals at the Asian Games in 1954 and 1958. However, amid Taiwan's diplomatic isolation in the 1970s, the country lost its place in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and spent years competing in Oceania while neighboring countries rapidly professionalized and expanded their football systems.
Women's football in Taiwan followed a different trajectory. Taiwan's women's team dominated Asia throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, winning three straight Asian Cup titles between 1977 and 1981 and reaching the quarterfinals of the inaugural FIFA Women's World Cup in 1991. Women's football in Asia at the time remained largely outside the control of the AFC and was instead organized by the now-defunct Asian Ladies Football Confederation, through which Taiwan's team was able to continue competing internationally even as the men's game declined. It was against this backdrop that Taiwan established the Mulan women's football team in 1975.
Named after the heroine Hua Mulan, who took her father's place in battle, the women's team came to embody Taiwan's football aspirations on the international stage at a time when the men's game was beginning to lose its footing. Encouraged by Mulan's international success, Taipei hosted the Women's World Invitational Tournament, known as the Chunghua Cup, from 1978 to 1987. It was one of the world's few major women's football tournaments.
However, as women's football professionalized globally in the 1990s and 2000s, Taiwan gradually lost the edge it held. Countries that were once behind Taiwan built professional leagues, youth academies, and broader player pools while Taiwan struggled to develop a sustainable football ecosystem. For years, Taiwan's domestic football scene revolved around company-backed teams such as Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) and Tatung Co., with Taipower long viewed as a stable destination for top players because it offered secure employment after retirement.
Over the past decade, Taiwanese football has gradually shifted toward a club-based structure. The launch of the Taiwan Mulan Football League in 2014 and the Taiwan Football Premier League in 2017 provided stable semi-professional competitions for women and men, while AFC-promoted club licensing requirements pushed teams to build youth systems and sustainable development structures. In 2022 and 2026, Taiwan reached the quarterfinals of the AFC Women's Asian Cup, coming within one victory of returning to the Women's World Cup for the first time since 1991.
Taiwan's back-to-back quarterfinal appearances at the AFC Women's Asian Cup attested to the country's enduring pursuit of its football dreams despite decades of setbacks. Even national teams have often struggled to field the strongest possible squads. Still, there have always been Taiwanese passionate about football and dreaming of reaching the international stage.