Some media releases about format of future AFC Competitions (Both WQ , Asia Cup Qualifiers as well as for clubs). Lets see how and when they will implement them.
If India is allowed in the AFC Champions League group stage then this would show how much the AFC only cares about copying Europe. The old format allowed the federations to look at themselves and work towards the goal of making the AFC Champions League. And the criteria was never that hard to bloody follow in the first place!
ACL does not provide the money yet to make this news worth it. We will just see our clubs get knocked-out.
I believe that change is needed. Instead of having three tournaments AFC Cup, ACL and AFC President's Cup, they should have two tournaments only. If you look in ACL, in top 16, there are 3 clubs of Saudi, Korea and Japan each. In AFC Cup, there are security issues and clubs from Yemen, Iraq, Syria have to play outside their country and those games then become dud. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar hardly get any crowd as these small countries have huge expat population which do not connect with local clubs. So AFC Cup, crowd wise has become a dud in West Asia zone. AFC Cup should become more inclusive of teams from North Korea, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan, Phillipines which presently play in President cup and get some crowd. Same way Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan clubs should move to ACL. AFC President cup should be abolished. They need to expand the tournament, TV rights, crowd, sponsors.
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http://www.the-afc.com/en/about-afc/afc-departments/competitions-division/28305-afc-brief-on-acl-2015-2016-criteria-and-slots.html
Some media releases about format of future AFC Competitions (Both WQ , Asia Cup Qualifiers as well as for clubs). Lets see how and when they will implement them.