KUALA LUMPUR: The qualifying journey for AFC U23 Asian Cup Qatar 2024 will be revealed on Thursday (May 25) when the official draw ceremony takes place at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) House here.
A total of 43 teams have submitted their interest to compete in the Qualifiers for the sixth edition of the tournament, which will be held from September 4 to 12 this year.
The teams will be divided into 11 groups – 10 groups will comprise four teams each, with the last group to contain three.
Each group will be played at a centralised venue in a single round-robin format, with the 11 group winners and four best second-placed teams among all groups qualifying for the AFC U23 Asian Cup Qatar 2024.
They will join Qatar, who have received automatic qualification as Host, to form the final cast of 16 at the tournament, to be played between April 15 to May 3, 2024.
The seeding for the Draw will be based on the AFC U23 Asian Cup™ Uzbekistan 2022 rankings. Teams that did not participate have been added as the lowest-ranked teams; all matches involving Qatar will be considered as friendly matches and not taken into account when calculating the final group rankings. As such, Qatar will be considered as an unranked team for seeding purposes.
The 11 teams that will serve as Hosts – Bahrain, China PR, Indonesia, Jordan, Korea Republic, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam – will be placed into the same Pot and drawn into separate groups at the beginning of the Draw.
