Asian Regional Football, Part 2

ASEAN.

I have a great liking for the Asean Region. Over several visits, I spent a total of more than two years working in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. There were always a number of frustrations as an expat worker, but I did enjoy the experiences and will certainly jump at chances to return to the area and to watch more football there.

For those that don’t know, ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations is an grouping of 11 countries, linked in a way that could be described as equivalent to “EU light”. The group started from the SEATO, the South East Asian Treaty Organisation – in which the UK, USA and Australia were helping to support those countries that were anti-communist during the period of decolonisation.

As the region became more stable, the group expanded to cover all nations in the area. There are now 11 countries in ASEAN

• Vietnam
• Cambodia
• Laos
• Myanmar
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Singapore
• Indonesia
• Brunei
• Timor Leste
• Philippines

On a football front, these 11 created the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) as a region under the AFC, but with the transfer of Australia from the Oceania Football Confederation of the AFC, the number was increased to 12. However, Australia have not fully indulged in the region’s competitions.

They sent an U-23 to the last Women’s Championship, and won the trophy, but when it comes to open age male football, they do not consider themselves part of the region.

Some commentators in Australia feel that their clubs and country may be missing out but the feeling in the ASEAN countries is indifferent to this. The eleven all have some close relationships and strong rivalries within the group

To some extent, this causes one problem. Success in the ASEAN competitions can be seen as enough and hence teams do not consider that they need to improve to challenge in the continental sphere, let alone the World stage.

This was certainly a case when I was working out there, but I think there is a wider view now.

ASEAN Championship

The championship for National sides has the longest history of ASEAN competitions, with the recently completed edition being its 16^th. Vietnam are now the holders, retaining the title won two years ago. Overall, Vietnam now has 4 titles, the same number as Singapore – although the Island state has not won since 2012. Thailand hold the most titles (7), while Malaysia won in 2010. Indonesia have reached the final 6 times but still have not won a title.

The competition has always been two groups and then semi-finals and final, but the number of teams in the groups has varied over the years, and hence whether or not qualification was needed (particularly until Timor Leste was added to the roster, meaning there were 11 teams).

Until 2016, group matches were at centralised venues, either one or two countries being used. Originally, the semi-finals and final matches were also played at the host countries, but these were later switched to home and away matches, mainly due to the large attendances that could be expected at this stage.

Since 2018, home matches have been played in the round robin stage, with groups of five and everyone playing two home games. Brunei were the team that missed the group stage this year, having lost to Timor Leste in the two legged qualifiers. (Timor Leste do not have a home venue, so their home match was actually in Kuala Lumpur, and their home group games were in Chonburi, Thailand.

Although it has always been a movable feast, the ASEAN Championship had tended not to use the International windows, so the teams do not generally have a call on players from outside the block.

Still, there was a better than functional championship that engaged the fans, particularly in the four biggest footballing nations in the area. And then, barely 11 months ago Gianni Infantino dropped by and announced…

FIFA ASEAN Cup

The big thing about this announcement was that no one knew a thing about it before the announcement. Every statement says it was planned in secret at FIFA without consulting the AFC, the AFF or any of the constituent Football Associations. The memo of understanding said to be signed last October was in fact not signed until six months later, and details of the tournament have been very slow to come out.

As with the other ASEAN competition, there was no mention of Australia in this.

From the word go, plans for the new tournament were sketchy. It did not appear that FIFA had a specific plan, other than to fit it in to the September/October international window.

The next thing we heard was that the existing competition would still go ahead, and there would therefore be two ASEAN competitions within a couple of months. I am not sure if the old ASEAN Championship have changed dates in order to get in first or if they were always intended for the schedule they have completed.

Eventually, we get the idea for how the 11 ASEAN teams could be squeezed into a window that only allows a team to play four games. Two divisions, A & B with a single country hosting each one. Shockingly, the lower division would not be hosted by an ASEAN country at all but instead staged in Hong Kong. A stage to show off Hong Kong’s shiny new Kai Tak Stadium.

We also hear that there will be three guest teams, invited into the competition. Clearly as the host, Hong Kong are the hosts of the lower division, in which the five weakest ASEAN teams will play. The five being Laos, Brunei, Timor Leste, Myanmar and Cambodia. This comes from the FIFA rankings. Myanmar may take issue with this as they finished above the Philippines in the other ASEAN tournament. The Philippines had a poor tournament, but FIFA still has them higher in the rankings than Singapore or Malaysia – the two losing semi-finalists.

FIFAs initial plan appears to have been to invite China and India as guest teams to make up two groups of 4 along with the six higher ranked ASEAN teams. China were quick to say no. The competition did not fit in with their plans in preparation for the Asian Cup in January, (they in fact have a series of four matches in Chongqing). India did choose to take part, and were included in the draw, while Pakistan became the other guest.

When the draw was made, Indonesia were drawn as hosts as the top of group A. This allowed the two highest ranked teams in the competition, and the finalists of the recent ASEAN Championship to be in the same group.

After the draw, India were offered the chance to play a friendly against Brazil, and chose to take this, rather than the competition and hence they were replaced by Bangladesh.

The groupings are

A: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh
B: Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Pakistan

It is a single round robin (three matches each) with the group winners going into the final, the runners-up into a play off for third place.

The fact that the two finalists from the earlier competition are paired together makes it appear that Indonesia have the easier route to the final. Indonesia also have home advantage, and they are a side that has become reliant on diaspora players. For this tournament, they have included nine players from European clubs and one playing in Australia that were missing from the earlier competition. Within Indonesia, this team is likely to be considered a failure if it does not reach the final

Malaysia take a different approach – they want a squad that is mainly playing in Malaysia, but there are three newly registered players, all playing for Johor Darul Ta’zim. This trio were all born abroad, two of them are registered as Heritage players (that is they have Malaysian ancestry), while the third has become a naturalised Malaysian citizen after playing in Malaysia for five years. All of these have been verified by FIFA, somewhat more care taken after seven players were registered for Asian Cup qualifying with false documentation.

Singapore have gone for experience – the whole squad plays within South East Asia, the majority in Singapore itself and this is very similar to their ASEAN Championship squad.

Both Singapore and Malaysia will see victory over the other as a successful tournament, as they can make excuses if they lose to Indonesia.

All of the ASEAN teams are expecting to beat Bangladesh, but they may find the squad is stronger than they would like. The vastly experienced Hamza Choudhury as well as Canadian born Shamit Shome (now at New York Cosmos. It is possible they could give caps to teenagers Zidane Yousouf (Walton & Hersham) and Farhaan Ali Wahid (Boreham Wood).

It is a similar tale in the other group, in that all the ASEAN sides expect to beat the guests, Pakistan. Pakistan has a few players in Scandinavia, with Danish and Swedish clubs, and Wrexham teenager Umar Nawaz.

The Philippines relies on a fairly experienced and mainly heritage side. Only about a quarter of the squad was born in the Philippines.

Thailand fielded an all Thai based squad for the ASEAN championship, and have not made many changes this time around. Elversberg’s Nicholas Mickleson and Hokkaido’s Supachok Sarachat bring back some experience.

Vietnam play a home based squad, much the same as the one that played in the ASEAN championship, so they will be looking to repeat their victory over Thailand from the earlier matches.

As I see it, the winner of the Vietnam v Thailand game should reach the final, with Philippines third and Pakistan carrying the red lantern.

While the guest teams may well fail to pick up any points in the Division One groups, Hong Kong is another matter. They will start as favourites to win their home tournament. The team all plays either in Hong Kong or mainland China. Checking a couple of names, I notice that at least two were born in Brazil.

In fact, there are hardly any players in Division 2 that have come in from outside ASEAN and China. Laos appears to have two at minor league clubs in Europe. Timor Leste appears to have the most travelled squad, including Oatnasio da Silva of Portadown, Northern Ireland. The squad includes players in New Zealand, Australia, Croatia and of course, Portugal – but hardly any with much experience in the major professional leagues even in those countries.

What Next?

FIFA has stated that the FIFA ASEAN Cup should have a second edition in four years time. The ASEAN Championship is likely to be repeated in two years. To run both in the same year seems like foolish overkill. It does not present a definitive champion.

FIFA were promising a much higher prize pool than the older championship could produce, with $1 million to the winning team in Division One. However, they have found it difficult to sell the broadcast rights and it is rumoured that the prize pot has been reduced by 35%, just three days before the tournament starts.

Any thought that this was being run as an altruistic event by FIFA, to improve football in the region can therefore be forgotten. The takeover (as is also true of the FIFA Arab Cup) is supposed to be self-financing. The 2030 edition will depend on its success in that. Should FIFA try to take over further tournaments, we can expect the same to hold true.

If FIFA were to spend some of their reserves on regional competitions, you can imagine that there would be complaints from those regions that did not get this support – but it would be in FIFAs remit to take these on – maybe they should be supporting regional tournaments in all five regions of Asia and making similar efforts in Africa.

For the ASEAN tournaments, should they get the chance to use the international windows again, it may be better to run over both this elongated window and the November one as well. They could then revert to the five team groups and play semi-finals and finals in the second window. It is not difficult to have five match days in the window with each team playing four games. Indeed, for the Gulf Cup (also in this window), the finalists will play five games. Meanwhile, Division C of the CONCACAF Nations League has defined six dates, with each team playing four times.

There are rumours that the AFC wants its own Nations League, to keep up with UEFA, CONCACAF and the rumoured African version. The logistics do not work well for Asia and the strengthening of Regional Cups may well be a better solution.