Earlier this year countries from the East and ASEAN Zones were invited to submit applications to host the AFC U-23 Championship. The AFC Competitions Committee has recommended China PR as the hosts of the AFC U-23 Championship in 2018. The competition will be played in four cities and four stadiums. So far the cities of Kunshan, Changshu, Jiangyin and Changzhou have been identified as potential host venues. http://www.the-afc.com/competitions...tions-committee-recommends-new-afc-cup-format
Google translated from Tajikistan FA website : The youth team of Tajikistan (U-23), which is from July 15 to 23 will participate in the qualifying tournament of the championship of Asia 2018, learns of his rivals in the group on 17 March. The draw for the qualifying round of the Asian Youth Championship 2018 will be held at the headquarters of the Asian Football Confederation in Kuala Lumpur. Application for participation in the qualifying round of 42 teams have applied, which will be divided into two zones. The western zone includes 22 teams - Iraq, Qatar (host), the UAE (host), Iran, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia (host), Oman, Kuwait (through suspension Federation is in standby mode), Tajikistan, Pakistan, Palestine (the owner), Bahrain, India, Kyrgyzstan (host), Lebanon, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Turkmenistan. Japan, South Korea, North Korea (host), Australia, Thailand (Host), China, Vietnam (host), Indonesia, Myanmar (host), Laos, Malaysia, East Timor, Chinese Taipei, Cambodia - The eastern zone of 20 teams will take part , Singapore, Mongolia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Brunei, Macao. According to the results of the draw in the western zone will be formed 3 groups of 5 teams and Quartet 2 of 4 teams. In the eastern area participants will be divided into 5 groups of 4 teams each. In the final of the Asian Championship to be held from 9 to 27 January 2018 China will emerge the winners of 10 teams and 5 teams, runners-up in their group with the best performance. http://fft.tj/molodezhnaya-sbornaya-tadzhikistana-u-23-uznaet-svoih-sopernikov-17-marta/
STAGE SET FOR AFC U-23 CHAMPIONSHIP 2018 QUALIFIERS DRAW http://www.the-afc.com/afc-u-23-cha...or-afc-u-23-championship-2018-qualifiers-draw Draw tomorrow Friday 3 pm Live :
AFC U-23 CHAMPIONSHIP 2018 HOPEFULS LEARN THEIR OPPONENTS http://www.the-afc.com/afc-u-23-cha...016/afc-u-23-championship-2018-hopefuls-learn
Side question, why cant all youth level AFC qualifiers combined? as in, why sperate them into West and east zones. Given its always hosted by 1 team in the group, lets put all nations against each other to get the best AFC representative in World tournements / AFC final rounds.
I guess they use it to get a mixed balance of qualified teams. But, yes, I agree with you, since hosted by one nation per group it wouldn't matter to me and would help nations in the long run....for example, Thailand always play Indonesia, Malaysia etc in qualification....why not get to play an Oman for example.
Match schedule : http://www.the-afc.com/afcasfeeds?view=all&id=202&type=Stage#ui-tabs-1 Cambodia replacing China as host for group J
APPETISING TIES ON THE MENU AS TEAMS SEEK AFC U-23 CHAMPIONSHIP 2018 QUALIFICATION http://www.the-afc.com/afc-u-23-cha...menu-as-teams-seek-afc-u-23-championship-2018
AFC U-23 CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFIERS: GROUP D - LEBANON 0-1 UAE / NEPAL 0-2 UZBEKISTAN http://www.the-afc.com/afc-u-23-championship-2018/afc-u-23-championship-qualifiers-group-d-md2
We are eliminated. A good thing, maybe for once after more than 10 years we will have a decent coach who knows a little bit about tactics and football. 2014 Asian games team was also eliminated in such humiliating way. However, some of its players are part of this successful NT which qualified to the WC. By the way, this is what happens when you don't have U23 team program (in other words when this team is created 3 days before the competition). Also thanks to Esteghlal for not realeasing 3 of the main players. Add to this no preparation and friendlies, plus a squad of U20 inexperimented players and you get this.
Slightly shocked by this but after seeing Oman play at the Islamic Solidarity Games- I think they've got a pretty good crop of players coming up- essentially everything came down to that game- pretty unforgiving, but I agree with the points you made.
Yeah, Oman team seems very interesting. They have good youth program. On the other hand Iran doesn't have U23 team, and they took guys from U20 WC with their coach who doesn't even know the position of players.
Good draw for Palestine! Japan will be tough but Korea DPR and Thailand are two winnable matches. Glad that we avoided other West Asian nations.
1st round results so far Group A China 3-0 Oman Qatar 1-0 Uzbekistan Group B North Korea 1-0 Thailand Japan 1-0 Palestine Group C Iran 4-1 Malaysia Saudi Arabia 2-2 Jordan Group D Australia 3-1 Syria South Korea 2-1 Vietnam
I think you'll find that's Iraq beating Malaysia. It's because Iran failed to qualify that no one is talking about this tournament on here.
We currently do not have U23 team. IFF sent U20 team to the qualifiers without some key players because the clubs refused to give their players to the team. IFF did not take this tournament seriously.