As the world’s largest and most diverse continent, Asia has a lot to offer to international football. Asia had been a very promising market for more developed football territories, especially Europe. For example, Asia contributes more than 30% of global TV audience for English Premier League (EPL) only. In 2011/2012 season, the EPL clubs’ fans reach 240 million in Asia with total of 815 million football fans across Asia & Oceania based on Sports Markt’s data. On the other hand, football in Asia has embarked to more advanced level as a professional football industry itself. As observed, 22 years ago Japan did not have any professional league and football was not even popular in their country. Later in 2002, they became the co-host of the World Cup, continued by first-time achievement qualified from the group stage to the last-16 in the the occasion. Nowadays, Japan has the highest FIFA rank of Asian teams and has more than 20 players playing in top professional clubs abroad. Regardless Japanese achievements, the football development in Asia, the league and professional clubs at national level, haven’t been developed evenly across all Member Associations (MAs).
As the highest football governing body in Asia, The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has developed a set of plan and agenda to bring Asian football forward. One important agenda that needs to be kept up is the implementation and execution of regional competitions both at national and club levels. At national level, the AFC Cup of Nations takes place every four years. Unlike any other confederations, the AFC also encourages its MAs to hold sub-regional competitions following the umbrella body which embraces them. Each sub-region of AFC; South East, East, South/Central and West still hold their own competitions until today without having conflict with FIFA’s calendar.
At the club level, AFC holds 2 major international competitions; Asian Champions League (ACL) and AFC Cup. Similar to the European system, the participants of the ACL and AFC Cup are the best teams who represent their MAs respectively. The best teams are selected from local competitions in accordance with the current slot quotas by AFC’s standard, which could be the winner of local league or member of the top 3. The winner of the ACL will be given the honor to represent Asia to the annual FIFA Club World Cup in the running year.
However, based on the list of AFC Cup of Nations’ champions, the distribution of title winners in Asian football leans on 2 sub-regions: East and West. Only 6 countries from the current members of the AFC have won the Asian Cup since the first edition in 1956: Japan (4 times) and South Korea (2) from East Asian Football Federation (EAFF), and then Saudi Arabia (3), Iran (3), Kuwait (1), and Iraq (1) from the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF).
The same situation was observed at club level. Since the 2002/2003 edition, the ACL trophy has been traveling only on the Eastern and Western part of the continent. In the last 11 editions, clubs from the WAFF MAs won the ACL 4 times while the rest won by clubs from the EAFF. On the other hand, the AFC Cup is well dominated by WAFF MAs since its first edition in 2004. The WAFF MAs have won the cup 10 times and only once the title went beyond the sub-region, which Uzbekistani FC Nasaf claimed it in 2011.
Therefore, to minimize the gap between its sub-regions in terms of achievement and also bring the football development forward across all Asia, the AFC started the development from the core of professional football at the national level; the club level.
Kick Off Programme
The Kick Off programme is a development program exclusively focusing on improvement of the club and league management in each Member Associations. The AFC initially implemented the programme in 11 MAs: Bangladesh, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The programme focuses on the assistance of management/ marketing aspect of national league and its participating clubs. The programme is also supported by FIFA and UEFA in its implementation. Experts in different management fields are sent to provide consultancies with respect to the programme. Services provided by the programme including strategic planning, consultancy, mentoring, seminar, as well as visitation from AFC’s Executives.
One of the special values that The Kick Off programme provides is strengthening the club and league management for each MAs by identifying specific needs and issues of the MAs. Hence, tailor-made and self-sustainable remedies to the issues will be provided uniquely to the MAs.
Services from the programme encompass broad range from management level to individual level. League governance and club are in management level, while player support covers individual level. The synergy of each level aims for a better management and implementation of the league competition. By applying to the programme, the MAs will also be benefited with financial incentives with maximum amount of $20,000 per project per year. To date, there are 20 MAs applied to the programme, and the AFC is still encouraging other MAs to apply as well.
The AFC is hoping that the developmental gap in the continent can be minimized through this programme in time. With a more competitive nature among MAs at national and club levels, Asian football will be able to thrive forward globally in the future.