In September, the AFC's Competition Committee held its fifth important meeting of the year at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. During the meeting, Vietnamese chairman Tran Khouk Thuy Anh said frankly that even if the Chinese Super League's
b>Changchun Yatai
和
b>Shanghai Seaport
The two teams withdrew from this season's AFC Champions League due to "force majeure" and the AFC will not hold the two clubs accountable.
(go ahead and do it) without hesitating
b>Shandong Taishan
和
b>Guangzhou team
Sticking with the competition, poor performances saw the Premier League fail to win any of the group stages of the AFC Champions League, and as a result, their skill points have shrunk significantly and their ranking in the AFC has gone down the drain.In the 2024 season, the Premier League will lose two of its places and will only have one place in the main round.
At the meeting on the 30th, President Thuan thanked the member associations for their persistence in competing during the epidemic and confirmed his understanding of the decision to withdraw from the tournament due to force majeure. He pointed out that there would be no recourse for withdrawing from the tournament for the same reason, including our Macau team and the two teams from Myanmar.
It's worth noting that before the AFC Champions League kicked off, the topic of whether or not the four Chinese Super League (CSL) teams would collectively withdraw from the tournament sparked a heated discussion within the industry. Shandong Taishan and Guangzhou insisted on participating in the tournament partly because of concerns over possible recriminations. But the AFC's stance seems to indicate that such concerns may be redundant.
As the Chinese Super League teams were affected by objective factors in the past two seasons, it seemed inevitable to send young players to the "second and third teams" to participate in the competition. However, the lack of personnel strength led to the Super League team in the group stage of the AFC Champions League without victory, and even by Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, the team defeated, seriously affecting the skills of the Super League rankings.
As usual, the AFC will announce the results of the quota allocation for the 2024 AFC Champions League season at the end of the year. As of now, the Chinese Super League is in 16th place on the AFC's league skill points ranking list of member associations, and has fallen to seventh place in the East Asia Region from the top spot in previous years. Japan's J-League and South Korea's K-League hold on to the top two spots in the East Asia Region, while China's Hong Kong League has risen to third place due to the outstanding performances of local players in this season's AFC Champions League group stage. The Vietnamese, Malaysian and Thai leagues also moved up in the rankings, coming in fourth through sixth respectively. According to the AFC's allocation methodology, regardless of this season's championship, the Chinese Super League's ranking is unlikely to make it into the top six, meaning that there is only one AFC Champions League spot left for the 2024 season. Therefore, it does not seem cost-effective for Chinese Super League teams to send a "second team" to participate.
