Asian Cup: facts and figures

The 19th edition of the Asian Football Cup will be held in the UAE on Saturday until February 1st.

The current tournament has new details that make it more exciting and interesting: for the first time in its history, the tournament has 24 teams instead of 16. The participating teams have been divided into six groups:

Group A: United Arab Emirates – Thailand – India – Bahrain

Group II: Australia – Syria – Palestine – Jordan

Group C: South Korea – China – Kyrgyzstan – Philippines

Group IV: Iran – Iraq – Vietnam – Yemen

Group V: Saudi Arabia – Qatar – Lebanon – North Korea

Group F: Japan – Uzbekistan – Oman – Turkmenistan.

The top six teams rank among the top 16, the top four in third place and the winner of the Confederations Cup in 2021.

The winner will not only win this honor, but also the biggest prize in the history of the Asian Championships. The winner will win $ 5 million, the finalists $ 3 million, the third and fourth places will receive $ 1 million each, and the remaining teams will receive $ 200,000 each.

The digital language will speak high in this tournament: 51 matches, spread over eight stadiums in four cities: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and Al Ain.

Sixty will also participate in the tournament, the largest participation of this number of referees in history, and will even be an opportunity for the emergence of the fifth badistant referee in the group matches and the role of the sixteenth.

This time, the UN Asian Cup is witnessing the use of "video technology" from the quarter-finals, as well as the adoption of the fourth switch in the extra rounds, which the team exhausted available replacements or not.

If we look at the history pages of the tournament, we find that the Japanese team is the perfect place to win this tournament, the last of them for the fourth time in 2011 at the expense of the Australian team for a goal .

Japan, which won the title three times in 1984, 1988 and 1996, and the Iranian team that won three times in 1968, 1972 and 1976.

Saqr Emirati

The history of the Asian Cup for Kuwait is the first Arab team to be among the winners in 1980, as Kuwaitis hosted the seventh edition and won a 3-0 win over the Republic of Korea finally.

The Israeli team was included in the Asian record of honor in 1964 when it won the tournament with the participation of teams from South Korea, India and Hong Kong, before the Israeli team leaves the tournament to no longer participate after 1974 because of differences with the Arab countries, then to move to the European Union. Football in 1994.

The first leg of the tournament was held in 1956 with the participation of four teams, Hong Kong, the host country, alongside Israel, South Vietnam and South Korea, who won the first championship.

This version of the Asian Championship is chosen as a special mantra in the form of a hawk, given the importance of this bird in the heritage of the United Arab Emirates.