The 2018 AFC U-23 Championship (also known as the 2018 AFC U-23 Asian Cup) will be the third edition of the AFC U-23 Championship, the biennial international age-restricted football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the men's under-23 national teams of Asia. A total of 16 teams will compete in the tournament. It is scheduled to take place 9–27 January 2018,[1] and will be hosted by China.[2]
The qualifiers were held from 15 to 23 July 2017.[4] China also participated in the qualifiers, even though they had already qualified automatically as hosts.[2]
Qualified teams
The following 16 teams qualified for the final tournament.[5]
^ abcdefAs China (Group J winners) had already automatically qualified for the final tournament as hosts, the six best runners-up qualified for the final tournament.
Venues
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.[2]
Draw
The 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four teams. The teams will be seeded according to their performance in the 2016 AFC U-23 Championship final tournament and qualification, with the hosts China automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.
Players born on or after 1 January 1995 are eligible to compete in the tournament. Each team can register a maximum of 23 players (minimum three of whom must be goalkeepers).[6]
Group stage
The top two teams of each group advance to the quarter-finals.
Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 9.3):[6]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they met in the last round of the group;
Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
China
Oman
Iraq
Qatar
Uzbekistan
Palestine
Australia
North Korea
Malaysia
South Korea
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Jordan
Thailand
Vietnam
Japan