This is more comedy from the Arab Football Confederation. Iran, the best overall performer in West Asia in recent years, gets the same number of spots as the worst performer in West Asia which is UAE, and Saudi Arabia whose clubs have a loosing record against the Iranian clubs for the last few years, are gifted more spots than Iran.
The allocation isn't about on field performance. It's off field performance that matters. There's nothing official from AFC anyway at this moment.
True, nothing's official. However I should mention that Saudi clubs (or club ) have outperformed Iranian clubs in the ACL despite what the resident Iranian fanboys here say. This season we had a semi finalist, when they had none. We also won the damn thing twice, which they've never done.
Pretty rich coming from a Korean. Remind me, wasn't there a massive match fixing scandal in the K-League only recently?
1st of all it has to be confirmed, but if this was the case, then Al Shabab would represent UAE, Al Gharafa represent Qatar and Zob Ahan would represent Iran. But, there's no official news. The only official news was last year when AC said they would use the same allocations for the next two editions. Only one edition has been played since they said this. The only other difference is that a Chinaman is leading the AFC and funny who things are changing.
By K-League, if you meant the League Cup, and by a handful of players, then yeah. What's rich is Korean clubs got past the group stage and the round of 16 with these unmotivated players. Even when these cheating players were cut, and the squad quartered, third-ed, and halved, K-League managed to send a club to the final. How does it feel knowing that Asia can't even beat players who were no longer than a week ago prior to each Champions League matchday purposely trying to lose? While we are at it, though, how about you take your time to remind me what you saw from Al-Sadd's Champions League campaign this year? All I saw was AFC evidently misinterpreting their own rules to allow an undeserving club to go through the quarterfinals, allow stupid goals that angered many football fans around the world, allow a fan-assaulting player to play the final despite what the rulebook says, and allow time wasting tactics. How's these cheating any better than what some of the Korean players did? Only difference is K-League called it cheating and got it out of the system, and AFC did not. These shit happen every year in favour of the Arabs. You can choose to put on your Arabic blind goggles and not see it, but too bad for you Arabs, everyone else does.
Don't act coy Al-HiJazzey. You know very well that we're talking about recent performances, which the ACL committee do take into consideration, meaning the performance at the last four editions of the ACL. Iranian clubs have a 2-to-1 win ratio against Saudi clubs since 2007. If you want to dispute that, I can list every single game played here. In addition, the Iranian clubs have made the final twice in the last 4 years, while Saudi clubs have made the final only once. Your last ACL win was in 2005, which is irrelevant to the ACL criteria, at least on paper, they don't go that far to grade "performance". Like Al-Ittihad, Sepahan should had also made the semi-final this year, and may have gone even further, had they not been disqualified for off-the-field reasons despite winning both of their quarter-final matches against the eventual "champions|. So you haven't done jack to deserve more spots than Iran. The only reason you got more spots, is because your Sheikhs have deep pockets, and know how to color a sparrow and sell it as a canary. Otherwise, you yourself had confessed earlier that Saudi Arabia doesn't even meet the basic requirements of the the Asian Champions League Criteria.
Actually, AFC did call cheating, and thats why the game between Al Sadd - Sepahan was overturned. Al Sadd scoring that dodgy goal was not cheating, it didn't break a law. It was just not fair, but what can AFC do about that? Yes the fighting, they should have handed out longer bans, thats where they went wrong. But, you can't call all Arabs cheat's when you only ever use one team as an example. Get some basis and use it. As for K-League, you tell us the whole League Cup and players getting cut, now thats an issue your quick to dismiss. Well done the league authorites for dealing with it, but because they did, you seem to think their cheating isn't half as bad.
Are you kidding? "AFC did call cheating on Sepahan"? Sepahan did not even know about the fact that player, had gotten two yellow cards in the group stage with another team. So it was screw-up on their part which AFC took full advantage of to give a freebie to Sadd. As a matter of fact, AFC had cleared that player to play for Sepahan. So you could say Sepahan were cheated by AFC. The rules were selectively enforced by the AFC committee, in order to give a free pass to Sadd to the next round. Why? Because the same AFC rules say that a player suspended in a group-stage match, from a team that has already been eliminated, can serve his suspension in the domestic league. That's what the player in question had done. The rules also say "suspended from the next match of the competition" which would have been the round of 16 for Sepahan. But somehow, AFC ignored these parts of their own rules, and interpreted the other parts of the rules in a way to screw Sepahan. As koreansock said, AFC is a corrupt confederation, run by the family members of corrupt Sheikhs who are notorious for nepotism.
Look around. No one likes the Arabs, and don't flatter yourselves because it has nothing to do with success of the Arabs--if success of Arabs in modern football even exist at all. I don't need to state any more examples than I choose to when Arab's influence in AFC's decision making process is historically evident. Forgone conclusions need not be proven, just as I don't need to reason what 1+1 is when I want to say the answer is 2. And I stated more than a couple of examples with one club alone. Stating more examples would only support my case.
Australia got 2+1 spots in ACL! http://sports.sina.com.cn/j/2011-11-23/15405840753.shtml Just confirmed minutes ago, Korea and China agreed to have 1 spots in qualification, Australia together with Thailand will also have a team in qualification! confirmed East Asia ACL Slots: Country Spots Japan 4 South Korea 3+1 China 3+1 Australia 2+1 Uzbekistan 1 Thailand 1+1 Indonesia 0+1
So what you confirmed a few days ago has chanegd again. Are these official from AFC or official from Chinese press?
What rule book you looking at? Nothing in the rules about serving a suspension in the league and the AFC is run by a Chinaman, not an ounce of Arab in him. Look at the commitees, there's a mixture representing Asia not just West Asia
Is it official? Really interesting in the criteria AFC use to consider slot allocation in the West zone.
Al-Sh!t winning the Asian club of the year and now this? This is the first time I used a triple facepalm twice in one day.
UAE getting 3 spots is even more comical. UAE are the punching bags of the West, not a single UAE team has gotten out the group stage for as long as I remember. Their stadiums are always empty. Yet, they award UAE more spots than Iran which has the best recent overall record in the West, and the highest attendance record in the ACL . That's Arab Football Confederation for you.