Especially when you factor in the seafood lunches they’ll have to provide
Lots of clubs in even SE Asia now have very rich and ambitious owners and get very good crowds. eg in Indonesia and Malaysia. I am sure those owners will be thrilled to have ‘their’ clubs playing in an international tournament.
Draw for the AFC Cup 23/24 on Thu (Macarthur and CCM)
And same for the AFC CL with City
And for 2024/25 we now have the…
Wait for it.
…
AFC Champions League Elite (ACLE)
Consisting of 24 teams.
Then the
AFC Champions League 2 (ACL2)
Consisting of 32 teams.
And finally
AFC Challenge League (ACGL).
Of 20 teams (real minnow countries only)
Also a to be determined Women’s League.
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More competitions = more seafood platters
So is it Just Melb C playing from the A-League? I would have thought the Mariners would be thee as well?
Nope. Mariners enter the AFC Cup this season.
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As above only City in the CL (or Next year’s Elite tier)
CCM and MacArthur in the Cup (which is more like next year’s Challenge excluding the top countries)
Australia is currently ranked 11th in the 8-yr ranking procedure, and it will probably take a while for this to improve.
I think from next year Australia will probably get 1 in the CLE and 1 or 1+1 in the CL2
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I’m actually looking forward to the cup more than the CL. Some interesting teams and not the usual suspects. I think an Aussie team might have a decent chance of winning it as well. Well not MacArthur of course but a proper Aussie team. Can’t wait until we are in it
Agree it’s a great chance for CCM and Macarthur. Unfortunately the Cup in this form is effectively a one hit wonder for Australia.
The 24/25 ACL2 will seemingly take the 3rd/4th best team from the $ countries (Saudi, Japan, China etc) after the first 2/3 qualify for the ACLE, so won’t be much different to the ACL of old.
The 23/24 Cup excluded any teams from the top 10 ranked teams (of which Australia was something like 23 over a shorter lookback period)
Nah. Due to Australian Clubs being regularly shit in the Champions League, the AFC slashed our national ranking and now only the Premiers get a full Champions League spot.
Our last appearance in the Champions League, we got a 0.5 spot, hence why we needed to play off against that Phillipino team (who we beat being largely unconvincing, despite the inflated scoreline) and only made it through to the group stage as the Chinese team we were meant to play pulled out of qualifying due to COVID IIRC.
Australian teams have been getting less and less spots for a while now. And it’s not going to change until A-League teams start getting out of the group stages regularly.
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Keep up article on the draw.
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Away to Bali United would go alright
All aboard the Bintang Booze Bus.
Melbourne City gets about the easiest possible draw they could - Thailand team, the Japanese J2 team and Chinese.
As for AFC Cup,
Group F: Dynamic Herb Cebu FC (PHI), Macarthur FC (AUS), Shan United (MYA), Phnom Penh Crown FC (CAM)
Group G: Terengganu FC (MAS), Bali United (IDN), Stallion Laguna FC (PHI), Central Coast Mariners (AUS)
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Travel not too bad for City.
Buriram is about 300km out of Bangkok,
And the other two about 100km from Tokyo and Shanghai respectively.
Macarthur and CCM definitely have some interesting travel challenges.
Geez I would have loved to be in the AFC cup this year. Some great away trips. Shame we sucked last season
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I would have loved Bali United, it’s cheaper for me to get there than to Sydney.
Cumdog desperately trying to arrange a transfer back to CCM so he can tear up Bali.