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POSITIVE IMPACT OF AFC CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

The tagline "The Future is Asia" will come true sooner or later for Asian Football. Asian Football is making definite progress but the gap is still significant when the results of Asian teams are compared in the World Cup with teams of other continents. No team from Asia qualified for second round except Australia in the 2006 World Cup. The standard of professional football in Europe is very advance and most of the leagues are very competitive in Europe. Moreover, most of the highly talented players from South America and Africa are playing in the highly competitive leagues of Europe. It is encouraging that more and more players from Asia is being signed by European clubs to play in the highly competitive leagues but there number is still not significant compare to South Americans or Africans.

Asian Football Confederation is aware of this gap and in last one decade it has taken number of steps to develop football in Asia and most important one was to professionalize the Champions League and re-launch it with total revamping in 2009. Thus the fully professional AFC Champions League (ACL) took off in March 2009. The architect of revamped ACL is Mr. Saburo Kawabuchi of Japan; he is a popular figure of Asian Football and a visionary football leader from Japan. The former President of Japan Football Association, Mr. Kawabuchi is credited with the success of J-League and its launch in 1993. It was an appropriate decision of AFC to appoint Mr. Kawabuchi to head the AFC Professional League Ad-hoc Committee for the revamping of ACL and professionalize the whole structure of not only of Champions League but also leagues of member associations across Asia.

The AFC Professional League Ad-hoc Committee devised ten criteria to select teams from member associations, and evaluation of criteria was done very objectively with points and rankings. Each of the ten criteria carried specific points which varied from 20 to 100 points. Twenty one countries were assessed and Committee visited each of the countries to study and evaluate the set criteria. In the first evaluation, only Japan could meet the criteria but in the following phases of evaluation other major countries made it to the Champions League, which was reported in October and December 2008. Thus clubs from 10 countries got direct entry to ACL and 3 countries in the play-off stage. That made total 35 clubs from 13 countries namely;

Japan (4 clubs), South Korea (4), China (4), Iran (4), Saudi Arabia (4), UAE (3 + 1 in play-off), Australia (2), Uzbekistan (2), Qatar (2), Indonesia (1+1), and one club each of play off from Singapore, Thailand and India. From play-offs two teams qualified for ACL and thus 32 clubs are currently involved in the 8 groups ACL 2009.

No doubt it was a challenging task to revamp the ACL and make the competition more exciting and popular event. Moreover, to re-brand ACL and attract fans, media and marketers to be part of it in a big way, was not an easy task. The involvement of high profile sponsors like, Qtel, DHL, ING, Emirates, etc., in the ACL, is only indicative of the fact that revamped ACL product is attractive to the marketers and they believe that they got an effective medium of communication platform to connect to their target consumers. ACL with US$ 8 million as prize money and better facilities for teams result in far better competition at this elite event. Definitely in the years to come ACL will grow as one of the high value sports properties in Asia. With advent of ACL, domestic leagues will also improve qualitatively because the criteria for qualification to ACL will be constantly upgraded progressively to highest professional standard in next few years time, which will make every member associations put in place the best professional structure for the league. In other words, each member association league should grow technically and commercially in order to attract larger fans, media and marketers towards its league.

Commercially for ACL to grow and position its brand will take some time and that can only happen if most of the clubs involved in the ACL puts its professional structure in place but to take best use of that professional structure of the club again depend upon the domestic league adopting professional structure in true sense without much delay. The other weakness in the ACL is the gap among the 32 clubs and if gap remains too wide between the clubs then competitive value of the ACL will not be attractive. The other area of challenge will be to attract larger television audience across Asia. UEFA Champions League has a huge television audience across Asia and ACL has to compete directly with this high value property. But initial data of ACL viewership is encouraging which is significantly higher than last season. It will be bit premature to predict whether ACL can break the market leadership position of UEFA Champions League or not. Still ACL can position itself in select target market space and can extend its brand value by building its brand personality by each passing year. One should not forget that UEFA Champions League also took time to establish that leadership position and it has constantly worked on improving its structure to attract larger commercial and fan base. There are chances that in future ACL may again be challenged by top clubs of Europe since there is a serious talk of starting European Super League for top clubs of Europe in a totally new format. Other important aspect is that best players from Asia should be involved in ACL otherwise it is again difficult for the ACL or clubs to grow and attract market space. In today’s scenario most of the best players from Asia are attracted to play in Europe and many are playing in Europe, which again attracts fans to be linked to European clubs more than its own club in Asia. It is all due to brand value of clubs and the leagues of Europe, and of course it’s higher entertainment value.

The most significant part to understand here is that when Japan made huge strides forward because of the success of J-league model, and the success of Japan only gives that optimism that the true hard work that has gone in revamping the ACL will result in huge dividend to Asian Football in the coming decade. AFC deserves all credit to bring about this change in ACL and this change will result in better national teams from Asia in the years to come. If ACL can raise its competitiveness significantly in next few years time then it automatically improves the competitiveness of the players involved in it, and that competitiveness will translate into better national teams. That’s how Asian teams will emerge as a serious contender to win the World Cup in future and then Asia will become true future of World Football.

About the Author

About Author::He is one of the highly qualified football experts with good experience in Indian football, and his involvement in Indian football is of more than a decade.
He had a successful tenure with Chandigarh Football Academy,

He has achieved Doctorate Degree in Physical Education (Specialized in Football). Management, coaching, and he was also privileged to under go courses organized by AFC and UEFA.
He was a Guest Faculty in Sports Management with Punjab University and Guest Lecturer in three Colleges affiliated to Punjab University.

His academic achievements are note worthy and he was awarded Junior and Senior Research Fellowship of University Grants Commission, Govt. of India from 1996 to 2000, and thus he was engaged in full time research for four years, and completed four research projects in Sports and Football.

Since 1998 he is writing for various magazines and web sites like www.kolkatafootball.com on different issues related to football.

The article posted in the site reflects the view points and ideas of the author concerned, and viewpoints in no way relate to the organisation, the author is associated with directly or indirectly.

why does arsenal have so many injuries?

people always say arsenal arent being targeted and its because its a young team but even the older players are constantly injured (rosicky, eduardo, gallas)

Please read this. Its from Arsenal physio Lewin

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/lewin-the-reasons-for-our-injury-levels

AFC Champions League review
The AFC Champions League got underway with several teams impressing amid numerous upsets, including surprising defeats for last year's finalists.

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