Indonesian and Thai teams disqualified from AFC Champions League

Two clubs from Thailand and two from Indonesia have been disqualified from participating in the 2006 edition of the AFC Champions League for failing to adhere to player registration regulations.

Provincial Electricity Authority and Thailand Tobacco Monopoly (both from Thailand) and Arema Malang and Persipura Jayapura (both from Indonesia) failed to submit their Official Player Registration forms by the deadline of midnight Sunday 12 February 2006 set by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The Organising Committee for AFC Club Competitions, sitting in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, decided that this failure represented a serious breach of Regulation 32 G i) of the rules governing the competition. The decision was ratified by the AFC Competitions Committee.

The regulation states: All registrations must be filed by the deadline of registration windows: (i) Any Club that does not submit their registration by the registration deadline for Match Days in the Group Stage will be automatically disqualified from the Competition. In this situation, the team will be deemed to have lost all their matches by a score of 3-0.

The committee was told that the clubs were granted an extension to complete the forms and send them to AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, but they failed to do so in the allotted time.

Al Hilal (from Yemen) and Dhofar (from Oman) have also been disqualified from the AFC Cup for the same reasons.

Explaining the decision, AFC President Mohamed bin Hammam said: SIt is essential that clubs comply with the regulations that govern AFC competitions, and failing to meet a registration deadline represents a serious breach of these regulations.

SThe AFC Champions League is Asia”s premier club competition and we simply cannot have clubs in this flagship event who show such disregard for the regulations. Clubs who pay little attention to such basic administrative matters have no place in the continent”s premier club competition.

The AFC President added, “Clubs throughout Asia have made great strides to improve their administrative practices and we can only hope that this decision serves as a lesson to show that the AFC will not tolerate such lapses in the future. This decision was taken in the best interests of the competition.”

“Our commitment to professionalise the administration of Asian club football is total. To this end, I am pleased to advise that AFC will form a committee whose sole undertaking is to provide recommendations to the AFC President and Executive Committee on how best to improve club football in Asia, and in particular a revised structure for the AFC Champions League. I very much look forward to receiving the report and recommendations on the matter.”

AFC have decided that, despite the disqualification of the four clubs, the format of the competition should stay the same. Group F and Group G will consequently contain only two teams. Now only Tokyo Verdy of Japan and Ulsan Horang-I of the Korea Republic are left in Group F after the exit of Arema Malang and Tobacco Monopoly.

In Group G, Shanghai Shenhua of China and Dong Tam Long An of Vietnam will be fighting for the group honours following the disqualification of Provincial Electrical Authority and Persipura Jayapura.

The clubs have no right of appeal.

The AFC Champions League kicks off on Wednesday 8 March 2006. The competition is for the league and cup champions of the top 14 national associations in the AFC, as decided by the Vision Asia ranking system.

AFC