2023 AFC U-17 Asian Cup

2023 AFC U-17 Asian Cup
ฟุตบอลเอเชียเยาวชนอายุไม่เกิน 17 ปี 2023
Tournament details
Host country	Thailand
Dates	15 June – 2 July
Teams	16 (from 1 confederation)

The 2023 AFC U-17 Asian Cup will be the 19th edition of the AFC U-17 Asian Cup (including previous editions of the AFC U-16 Championship and AFC U-17 Championship), the biennial international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the men's under-17 national teams of Asia. This edition will be the first since 2006 to be played as an under-17 tournament, as the AFC proposed to switch the tournament from under-16 to under-17 starting from 2023.[1] Moreover, the tournament was also rebranded from the "AFC U-16 Championship" to the "AFC U-17 Asian Cup".[2]

On 25 January 2021, the AFC announced that Bahrain would retain hosting rights for the 2023 edition after the cancellation of the 2020 AFC U-16 Championship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[3][4] However, Bahrain decided to withdraw the rights to host the competition on 16 June 2022, requiring a new host to be chosen at a later date.[5] On 23 December 2022, Thailand were recommended the hosting rights, in which the final decision will be ratified by the AFC Executive Committee.[6]

A total of 16 teams will play in the tournament. The top four teams of the tournament will qualify for the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup as the AFC representatives.

Japan are the title holders, having won the title in 2018.

Qualification

Qualification matches were played between 1–9 October 2022.[7]

Qualified teams

A total of 16 teams including hosts qualified for the final tournament. Bahrain, Indonesia, Oman, United Arab Emirates and North Korea (the latter of which did not enter qualifying) all missed out on this edition after initially qualifying for the previous edition. Furthermore, Afghanistan, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam all qualified for this edition after initially missing out.

Team	Qualified as	Appearance	Previous best performance
Japan	Group A winners	16th	Champions (1994, 2006, 2018)
Malaysia	Group B winners	6th	Quarter-finals (2014)
Qatar	Group C winners	11th	Champions (1990)
Saudi Arabia	Group D winners	11th	Champions (1985, 1988)
Yemen	Group E winners	6th	Runners-up (2002)
Vietnam	Group F winners	8th	Fourth place (2000)
Australia	Group G winners	7th	Semi-finals (2010, 2014, 2018)
Tajikistan	Group H winners	4th	Runners-up (2018)
Iran	Group I winners	12th	Champions (2008)
Uzbekistan	Group J winners	10th	Champions (2012)
South Korea	Best runners-up	15th	Champions (1986, 2002)
China	2nd best runners-up	15th	Champions (1992, 2004)
Afghanistan	3rd best runners-up	2nd	Group stage (2018)
India	4th best runners-up	9th	Quarter-finals (2002, 2018)
Thailand	5th best runners-up and hosts	12th	Champions (1998)
Laos	6th best runners-up	3rd	Group stage (2004, 2012)

Venues

The competition was played in four venues across three cities/provinces.

Bangkok	Bangkok Chonburi Pathum Thani	Pathum Thani
Rajamangala Stadium		Pathum Thani Stadium
Capacity: 49,722		Capacity: 10,114

Pathum Thani		Chonburi
Thammasat Stadium		Chonburi Stadium
Capacity: 25,000		Capacity: 8,680

Match officials

Draw

The 16 teams are to be drawn into four groups of four teams, with the teams seeded according to their performance in the 2018 AFC U-16 Championship final tournament and qualification, with the potential hosts Thailand automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw. The draw took place and the match schedule was confirmed on 30 March 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand.[8]

Pot 1	Pot 2	Pot 3	Pot 4
Thailand (H) Japan Tajikistan South Korea	Australia India Iran Yemen	Malaysia Vietnam Afghanistan Saudi Arabia	China Uzbekistan Qatar Laos

Group stage

The group winners and runners-up advance to the quarter-finals.

Tiebreakers

Teams are to be 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 tie-breaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings:

Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
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 were 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);
Drawing of lots.

All match times are in local time, ICT (UTC+7).

Schedule
Matchday	Dates	Matches
Matchday 1	June 2023	1 v 4, 2 v 3
Matchday 2	June 2023	4 v 2, 3 v 1
Matchday 3	June 2023	1 v 2, 3 v 4

Group A

Pos	Team	Qualification
1	Thailand (H)	Knockout stage
2	Yemen	Knockout stage
3	Malaysia
4	Laos

First match(es) will be played on 15 June 2023. Source:
Rules for classification: Group stage tiebreakers
(H) Host

15 June 2023