October 5 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has renamed its age group competitions to become AFC Asian Cups from 2021. The Asian Cup naming convention will also be rolled out across the confederations Futsal and Beach Soccer competitions.
“We believe the change reflects the new stature of the competitions and by further strengthening the brand and commercial value of our competitions, there will be significant benefits for the AFC and its Member Associations,” said AFC General Secretary Dato’ Windsor John.
“It is not only the name that will change as the AFC, in line with our Vision and Mission, will continue to enhance and invest in all our competitions to provide the best platform for Asia’s talents at all levels in the coming years.”
The qualifying rounds for the AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup 2022 and the AFC U20 Women’s Asian Cup 2022 will be the first competitions to carry the new name.
Japan, DPR Korea and Korea Republic will be direct qualifiers to the AFC U20 Women’s Asian Cup final competition in 2022 after they finished as the top three teams in the AFC U-19 Women’s Championships in Thailand in 2019.
Japan, DPR Korea and China PR received automatic qualification for the AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup 2022 in line with their finishing position in the AFC U-16 Women’s Championship also held in Thailand in 2019.
Australia, Mongolia, Myanmar and Tajikistan will host groups in both the AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup and the AFC U20 Women’s Asian Cup qualifying round 1 competitions.
For the AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup qualifiers the other hosts will be Bangladesh, Jordan, Kyrgyz Republic and Vietnam while China PR, Chinese Taipei, Laos and Singapore will be hosts in the AFC U20 Women’s Asian Cup qualifying round 1.
The re-naming was ratified by the AFC executive committee after a recommendation from the AFC’s marketing committee. It will only be applied to AFC competitions scheduled to take place from 2021 and will not impact the age-group tournaments postponed from 2020.
At the same time the AFC Futsal Championship, AFC Women’s Futsal Championship, AFC U-20 Futsal Championship and AFC Beach Soccer Championship will also become AFC Asian Cups.
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