KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 13 (Reuters) - The winners of the first Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League will receive £330,000, five times more than the first place prize for any previous Asian club competitions.
The figure was released on Tuesday at the launch of the new
competition, which is modelled on the European Champions League.
'After the success of the World Cup in Korea and Japan
everybody wants to invest in Asian football, everybody wants to
be a part of Asian football,' said AFC general secretary Peter
Velappan. 'It is a gold mine.'
The league has been created by the Asian Football
Confederation to give clubs in the continent more incentive to
play in Asia-wide tournaments with prize money and subsidies for
staging games topping £2,000,000.
It replaces the Asian Club Championship, Asian Cup Winners'
Cup and the Asian Super Cup.
The runners-up will receive £200,000 and the 51 competing
teams from 29 countries throughout the world's most populous
continent will be given subsidies ranging from £6,500, for
first round participants, to £65,000 for sides making it to the
last four.
The first match in the new competition will be a preliminary
round showdown between Al Wihdat of Jordan and Lebanon's Al
Nejmeh, with the first leg in Amman, Jordan later on Tuesday.
The preliminary stages will finish on November 27 with the
big guns of Asian football entering the competition at the
16-team group stage to be played in four venues from March 9-15
next year.
'This is a wonderful initiative from the AFC and a great
step forward for Asian football,' said FIFA president Sepp
Blatter.
'The AFC Champions League will greatly enhance club football
in Asia. As we saw at the World Cup, Asian football at an
international level is on the rise. This competition will help
raise the standard of club and international football even
further.'
- NEWS
