Stepping into the end of September in Kuala Lumpur, the AFC Competition Committee held its 5th working meeting of the year on the 30th, which was held at its headquarters in Malaysia. At the meeting, Vietnamese chairman Tran Khouk Thuan confessed that even if the Chinese Super League's
Changchun Yatai (soccer team)
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Shanghai harbor
Due to "force majeure" to withdraw from the AFC Champions League, the AFC will still be lenient, not to pursue punishment.
Meanwhile.
Shandong Taishan prefecture level city in Shandong
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Guangzhou team
The poor performance of the Chinese Super League in the group stage of the AFC Champions League, the technical points have shrunk significantly. Looking ahead to the 2024 season, the Chinese Super League's AFC Champions League quota will be drastically reduced from the past "2+2" to one, and the loss of withdrawal from the tournament seems to be more cost-effective compared to sending the "second team" to participate in the tournament.
In his meeting on the 30th, Tuan recognized the persistence and efforts of the member associations during the epidemic and expressed his understanding for the teams that withdrew from the tournament due to objective factors. He emphasized that
Changchun Yatai (soccer team)
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Shanghai harbor
The withdrawal was the result of "force majeure". In addition, our Macao and Myanmar teams withdrew from the tournament for similar reasons and will not be subject to additional sanctions.
It is worth mentioning that the discussion about whether the four teams of the Chinese Super League quit en masse has sparked heated debates at home and abroad.
Shandong Taishan prefecture level city in Shandong
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Guangzhou team
s insistence on participating stems, in part, from concerns about the potential for retiring from the tournament to recover penalties. However, a statement from the AFC Competition Committee seems to have eased that concern.
As the Chinese Super League (CSL) teams were affected by objective factors for two consecutive seasons, sending young players to the "second team" or "third team" to participate in the AFC Champions League, it seems unavoidable that they would be wiped out in the knockout rounds. What is even more worrying is that due to their lack of strength, the Chinese Super League teams had no victory in the group stage of the AFC Champions League, and were even defeated by teams from Malaysia and Hong Kong, resulting in a massive loss of technical ranking points.
As a rule, the AFC will announce the results of the 2024 season's AFC Champions League quota allocation at the end of the year. As of now, the Chinese Super League is ranked 16th in the AFC's league technical points ranking list of member associations, and the ranking of the East Asia Region has dropped from first to seventh. Currently, Japan's J-League and South Korea's K-League are in the top two places in the East Asia Region, while our Hong Kong League is in the third place by virtue of its outstanding performance. The Vietnamese, Malaysian and Thai leagues have also improved their rankings respectively and are temporarily ranked fourth to sixth. According to the AFC's allocation methodology, regardless of this season's AFC Champions League winner, the Chinese Super League's ranking is unlikely to make it into the top six, meaning that there will only be one AFC Champions League main round spot for the 2024 season. Therefore, the two teams in the Chinese Super League sent the "second team" to participate in the competition, the loss is not worth it.
