The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is the governing body of association football in Asia and Australia. It has 47 member countries, mostly located on the Asian and Australian continent, but excludes the transcontinental countries with territory in both Europe and Asia - Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey - which are instead members of UEFA. Three other states located geographically along the western fringe of Asia - Cyprus, Armenia and Israel - are also UEFA members. On the other hand, Australia, formerly in the OFC, joined the Asian Football Confederation in 2006, and the Oceanian island of Guam, a territory of the United States, is also a member of AFC, in addition to Northern Mariana Islands, one of the Two Commonwealths of the United States. Hong Kong and Macau, although not independent countries (both are Special administrative regions of China), are also members of the AFC.
One of FIFA's six continental confederations, the AFC was formed officially on 8 May 1954 in Manila, Philippines, on the sidelines of the second Asian Games. The main headquarters is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The current president is Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain.
Video Asian Football Confederation
History
The Asian Football Confederation was founded on 8 May 1954. Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Republic of China (Chinese Taipei), Hong Kong, India, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore and South Vietnam were founding members.
The Asian Ladies Football Confederation (ALFC) is the section of the AFC who manage women's football in Asia. The group was independently founded in April 1968 in a meeting involving Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. In 1986 the ALFC merged with the AFC. The Asian Ladies Football Confederation helped organise the AFC Women's Asian Cup, first held in 1975, as well as the AFC's AFC U-19 Women's Championship and the AFC U-17 Women's Championship.
Maps Asian Football Confederation
Members
The AFC has 47 member associations split into five regions.
- 12 from West Asia
- 6 from Central Asia
- 7 from South Asia
- 10 from East Asia
- 12 from South East Asia
Notes
Former members
- Israel Football Association 1954-1974; joined UEFA in 1994 because they were excluded from AFC competitions, as a result of a proposal by Kuwait which was adopted by a vote of 17 to 13 with 6 abstentions.
- New Zealand Football 1964; founding member of OFC in 1966
- Football Federation of Kazakhstan 1992-2002; joined UEFA in 2002
Competitions
International
The AFC runs the AFC Asian Cup and AFC Women's Asian Cup, which determine the Champions of Asia, as well as the AFC Solidarity Cup. All three competitions are held every four years. The AFC also organises the AFC Futsal Championship, AFC Beach Soccer Championship, various age-level international youth football tournaments and the Asian qualifying tournament for the FIFA World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup and for football at the Summer Olympics.
In addition to the AFC run international tournaments, each AFC regional federation organises its own tournament for national teams: EAFF East Asian Cup, SAFF Championship, AFF Championship and WAFF Championship.
Club
The top-ranked AFC competition is the AFC Champions League, which started in the 2002-03 season (an amalgamation of the Asian Champions Cup and the Asian Cup Winners Cup) and gathers the top 1-4 teams of each country (the number of teams depend on that country's ranking and can be upgraded or downgraded); this competition only gathered teams from top country.
A second, lower-ranked competition is the AFC Cup. This competition was launched by AFC in 2004. A third competition, the AFC President's Cup, which had started in 2005, was absorbed into the AFC Cup in 2015.
The AFC also runs an annual Asian futsal club competition, the AFC Futsal Club Championship.
Current title holders
AFC Competitions
Sponsors
The following are the sponsors of AFC (named "AFC Partners"):
- Emirates
- Nike
- Nikon Corporation
- Epson
- Aramex
- Kirin
- Konica Minolta
- Toshiba
- TOTO
- Asahi
- Toyota
- Saison Card
- Samsung
- Makita
- ING
- FamilyMart
- Hyundai
Rankings
Hall of Fame
- Harry Kewell
- Bhaichung Bhutia
- Homayoun Behzadi
- Ali Daei
- Yasuhiko Okudera
- Hong Myung-bo
- Soh Chin Aun
- Sami Al Jaber
- Sun Wen
- Homare Sawa
Asian Icons
- Bambang Pamungkas
- Hidetoshi Nakata
- Mohamed Al-Deayea
- Ali Daei
- Fan Zhiyi
- Shinji Kagawa
- Hao Haidong
- Server Djeparov
- Harry Kewell
- Younis Mahmoud
- Hwang Sun-Hong
- Homare Sawa
- Yasser Al-Qahtani
- Ali Karimi
- Adnan Al Talyani
- Majed Abdullah
Major tournaments
- Legend
- 1st - Champion
- 2nd - Runner-up
- 3rd - Third place
- 4th - Fourth place
- QF - Quarterfinals
- R16 - Round of 16 (since 1986: knockout round of 16)
- GS - Group stage (in the 1950, 1974, 1978, and 1982 tournaments, which had two group stages, this refers to the first group stage)
- 1S - First knockout stage (1934-1938 Single-elimination tournament)
- o -- Did not qualify
- × -- Did not enter / withdrawn / banned / disqualified
- -- Hosts
FIFA World Cup
AFC Asian Cup
Notes
Other international tournaments
FIFA Confederations Cup
Summer Olympics
FIFA U-20 World Cup
FIFA U-17 World Cup
FIFA Futsal World Cup
FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup
FIFA Women's World Cup
AFC Executive Committee
- President
- HE Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa
- Vice Presidents
- Praful Patel - Senior Vice President
- Saud Abdulaziz Al Mohannadi - Vice President
- Winston Lee Boon Aun - Vice President
- Ali Kafashian - Vice President
- FIFA Council Members
- Zhang Jian
- Abdullah Ibni Sultan Ahmad Shah, Regent of Pahang
- Kozho Tashima
- Mariano V Araneta Jnr
- Chung Mong-gyu
- Mahfuza Akhter Kiron
- Members
- Faisal Saleh Hayat
- Moya Dodd
- Susan Shalabi Molano
- Han Un Gyong
- HE Mohammed Khalfan Al Romaithi
- Ahmed Eid S. Al Harbi
- Mohamed Shaweed
- Sardor Rakhmatullaev
- Hachem Haïdar
- Zohra Mehri
- Co-opted
- Dr Tran Quoc Tuan
- Timothy Fok
- General Secretary
- Dato' Windsor John Paul
See also
- AFC Annual Awards
- List of Presidents of AFC
- Sports in Asia
References
External links
- Official AFC website (in English) (in Arabic)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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