Stage set for AFC U-23 Championship Qatar 2016

AFC – DOHA, With just over a week to go until the start of this month’s AFC U23 Championship in Qatar, the exceitement is starting to build as fans throughout the continent wait to see if their favourites will rule the Asian roost.

BACKGROUND

The inaugural event – the 2013 AFC U22 Championship – took place in Oman in January 2014 after the original tournament was postponed.

This is the first time the event will be used as the qualifier for the Olympic Games. The top three teams from this tournament will qualify for Rio 2016.

The tournament is open to all the AFC’s Member Associations. Participating teams take part in an official qualification round, with 16 advancing to the finals. The qualifiers were held on official match days in March 2015. As with other age-limit national team competitions, the qualification groups were drawn on a zonal basis for the West (West, Central and South Asia) and the East (East and ASEAN). The previous competition’s ranking was applied for the seeding of teams during the draw and Qatar, as 2016 hosts, received a direct bye to the finals.

A total of 44 member associations entered the qualifying competition for the 2016 edition. Excluding Qatar, 43 teams competed in 10 groups, with the group winners and the five best second-placed teams going through to the finals where they will be joined by the hosts.

Widely regarded as the AFC’s second biggest national team competition after the AFC Asian Cup, the competition in Qatar is expected to attract a plethora of attention from sponsors, fans and media alike.

IRAN

Buoyed by the four goals of the prodigiously talented Sardar Azmoun – who scored three times at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup including a sublime strike against Qatar – Iran recorded victories over Nepal (5-0), Palestine (3-0), and Afghanistan (6-0) and went into the Group C decider needing just a point against Saudi Arabia to advance as group winners. A 2-1 defeat, however, saw the Saudis take top spot although Iran would ultimately still qualify to the finals as the second best second-placed team, to mark a second appearance in the tournament after taking part in the inaugural competition, where they failed to reach the knockout stage after finishing third in their group behind Japan and Australia.