AFC CUP

The 'AFC Cup' is an annual international association football competition between domestic clubs sides run by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Qualification to the competition is to clubs from AFC-affiliated countries which fall into the AFC's 'developing nations' category as laid out in their 'Vision Asia' document ^[1]. Countries which are 'mature' nations are entered into the AFC Champions League, and countries which are 'emerging' nations are entered into the AFC President's Cup.
The 'developing nations' are the fourteen 'next-best' countries which lie outside the top-14 countries in the AFC region which send their club sides to the more prestigious AFC Champions League. Thus the two competitions are not interlinked as the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Cup in Europe, and Champions League losers go home and do not compete in the Cup.

Contents

Participating nations and regions

Competition format

Results

Performance by nation

References

External links

Participating nations and regions

Clubs from the following 14 football associations take part in the competition.

'West Asia' ★ Bahrain ★ Jordan ★ Lebanon ★ Oman ★ Yemen

'Central Asia' ★ Bangladesh ★ India ★ Turkmenistan

'East Asia' ★ Hong Kong'Southeast Asia' ★ Maldives ★ Malaysia ★ Singapore ★ Vietnam ★ ★ Thailand ★

★ Vietnam and Thailand lose ration for Australia in AFC Champions League. Instead of sending two teams by each country to compete for AFC Champion League, the second representative team of Vietnam and Thailand is demoted to play in AFC Cup.

Competition format

The format of the AFC Cup is the same as that for the AFC Champions League. Each country sends two teams representing the domestic league winners and the cup winners. The participating teams are split into seven groups of three or four (depending on the actual number of participating teams in each group), with each team playing the others in the group in a round robin format. The winners of each group enter into the quarter finals along with the defending champions. The quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals are played as a knockout competition.

Results

Season		Final				Semifinalists (No 3rd place match)
		Champions	Score	Runner-up
2007 ''Details''
2006 ''Details''		'Al Faysali' (Jordan)	1st leg: '3-0' 2nd leg: '2-4'	Muharraq Club (Bahrain)		Al Wihdat (Jordan)	Al Nejmeh (Lebanon)
2005		'Al Faysali' (Jordan)	1st leg: '1-0' 2nd leg: '3-2'	Al Nejmeh (Lebanon)		New Radiant (Maldives)	Sun Hei (Hong Kong)
2004		'Al Jaish' (Syria)	1st leg: '2-3' 2nd leg: '1-0' (away goals win)	Al Wahda (Syria)		Geylang United (Singapore)	Home United (Singapore)

Performance by nation

#	Nation	Winners	Runners-up
1	align=left	2	0
2	align=left	1	1
3	align=left	0	1
3	align=left	0	1

References

1. AFC Cup 2004

External links

★ RSSSF - AFC Cup

★ AFC Official Web Site