At the Soca Football Training Base in Zhuhai, the FA Cup Qualifying Tournament came to an end on January 23, with 16 teams standing out and qualifying for the main tournament. The CFA has carefully planned a series of incentives to give amateur teams across the country a stage to showcase themselves, such as linking the qualifying tournament with local member associations' cups, prompting associations that have not yet organized them to take positive action.
2024 marks the start of the full return of qualifying for the FA Cup. Each member association selected teams to participate in the tournament, which were drawn into three groups, each of which played a single round-robin tournament. As many as 16 teams, including Ningbo Haishu Hao Mei, Shanghai Changning Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Shanghai Shenshui, stood out and successfully advanced.
The core concept of the FFA Cup is "Football for All, Fun for All". The qualifying tournament brought together players from a variety of fields, including Tibetan compatriots, student teams, and even ex-professionals such as Zhang Lu, Li Jianbin and Gao Xiang. Even Zhu Jun, 57, a former investor in Shenhua, took to the field and scored.
Affected by the epidemic, the qualifying tournament for the FA Cup had been suspended. It was restarted this year with the aim of breaking the boundaries between amateur and professional teams by linking the qualifying tournament with the local member associations' cup competitions and providing a platform for amateur teams to play against professional teams.
The FA reportedly plans to ask member associations to record this year's cup matches in preparation for the 2025 FA Cup qualifying tournament and to guide related work. For associations that have yet to hold a cup tournament, the FA encourages them to organize the tournament as soon as possible to ensure a seamless transition to the qualifying tournament.
The first round of the 2024 AFC Cup main round will see the teams that have advanced from the qualifying rounds face off against the Chinese Championship teams. The promoted teams will have to go through three rounds in the main round, and will then face the Chinese Super League teams. This not only enhances the branding of the cities where the amateur teams are based, but also motivates local football associations to organize the tournament.
The AFC Cup has traditionally been a hotbed for blowouts, with Jingchuan Wenhui beating Guoan in 2022. In this year's qualifying round, teams such as Ningbo Haishu Haomei and Shanghai Changning Mitsubishi Heavy Industry performed well and are expected to give birth to dark horses.
The cup system allows lower-tier teams to challenge higher-tier teams, lowering the participation threshold. Theoretically, lower-level teams even have a chance to participate in the AFC Champions League (subject to qualification by the AFC). This season, J2 League's Kofu Fung Lam won the championship, not only qualifying for the AFC Champions League, but also making it out of the group stage, showing the comeback of a lower-level team.
The fact that Jingchuan Wenhui beat a professional team and was able to play against a Chinese Super League team after only one year was a great publicity opportunity for the team and set an example for other amateur teams to follow, inspiring them to challenge the stronger teams.
The FA Cup plans to give lower-level teams priority access to home matches, with Central B, Central A and Chinese Super League teams playing in that order. In the future, the FA also plans to expand the size of the qualifying tournament.
From March 15 to 17, the 16 teams that advanced from the qualifying rounds will play one-on-one matches against a total of 28 teams from the fifth through sixteenth places in the Central Championship Finals, with the winners advancing to the next round.
