AFF members mull meets

The ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) and other AFF representative members met last weekend in Myanmar to discuss organising this year”s important competitions.

Chairman of the East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) Takeo Okada tabled the idea of unifying the two aforementioned events to push the level of competition in both the Southeast and East Asian regions.

To develop the sport in the larger region of Asia, Okada called for all sides to work closely together in fields such as training, marketing and communications. Okada”s plan would give teams in Southeast Asia further opportunities to compete against strong rivals in the East Asian region such as Japan, South Korea and China.

In addition, new contenders in the competitions could attract more viewers to the stadiums in the East Asian region where lacklustre teams had failed to fill the seats, he said.

At the meeting, representatives agreed with Okada”s idea but worried about how to devise a plan to benefit all involved. A decision would be finalised at the conference in May in Cambodia, representatives concluded.

“This is a great opportunity for Vietnamese football; the stiff competition can only help the sport”s development in Viet Nam. We will create good conditions for this strategic plan to go through,” said general secretary of the Viet Nam Football Federation, Tran Quoc Tuan.

Another issue discussed in the meeting was a decrease in the number of qualifying teams in certain Southeast Asian (ASEAN) events. AFF will limit the number of teams in the Southeast Asian U-17 and U-20 tournaments. Only the contenders who earn a berth at the Asian championships will be allowed to register for such AFF events. AFF also plans to invite at least one strong visitor to these competitions.

Viet Nam, Thailand and Malaysia have already earned berths in the Asian U-20 Football Championships. U-20 Australia, an invited team, will join the championships later this year.

Viet Nam also won a place in the Southeast Asian U-17 Football Championships with hosts Myanmar and Laos, which is set for May. Other rivals were not named.

At the meeting, AFF also announced the Southeast Asian Football Championships, the former Tiger Cup, would officially kick off next January.

The competitor list so far includes Viet Nam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar; two others who will play in an earlier qualifying round will finish off the roster. VNS