The 2020 AFC U-23 Championship was the fourth edition of the AFC U-23 Championship, the biennial international age-restricted men's football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for under-23 national teams. A total of 16 teams competed in the tournament. It took place between 8–26 January 2020 in Thailand.
The tournament acted as the AFC qualifiers for the 2020 Summer Olympics men's football tournament. The top three teams of the tournament would qualify for the Olympics in Japan as the AFC representatives.[2] As Japan had already qualified as the hosts, had they reached the semi-finals, the other semi-finalists were guaranteed qualification even before the phase would have commenced.[3]
Uzbekistan were the defending champions,[4] but were eliminated in the semi-finals. South Korea became the fourth different country to win the tournament, beating Saudi Arabia in the final,[5] while Australia defeated Uzbekistan in the third place game 1–0.[6]
Host selection
Several nations expressed interest to host the tournament, including Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.[7][8] Thailand were selected as host of the competition at an AFC Competition Committee's meeting in Tokyo in August 2018.[9]
Thirteen of the sixteen teams (including hosts Thailand) that qualified for 2018 AFC U-23 Championship qualified again for the 2020 final tournament. The 2013 champions Iraq, 2016 champions Japan, 2018 champions Uzbekistan all qualified for the 2020 final tournament. The teams: Iraq, Japan, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, South Korea, China PR, Australia qualified for all editions of AFC U-23 Championship till 2020.
Iran, United Arab Emirates come back after missing out in 2018, with Bahrain making their debut at the tournament finals.
The following 16 teams qualified for the final tournament.[11]
The draw of the final tournament was held on 26 September 2019, 15:00 ICT (UTC+7), at the Swissotel Bangkok Ratchada in Bangkok.[12][13][14] The 16 teams were drawn into four groups of four teams. The teams were seeded according to their performance in the 2018 AFC U-23 Championship final tournament and qualification, with the hosts Thailand automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.[15]
On 3 January 2020, the AFC announced the list of referees chosen for the 2020 AFC U-23 Championship. 34 referees, 26 assistant referees and 2 support assistant referees were appointed for the tournament. Video assistant referees will be used in this tournament.[16][17]
Players born on or after 1 January 1997 were eligible to compete in the tournament. Each team had to register a squad of minimum 18 players and maximum 23 players, minimum three of whom must have been goalkeepers (Regulations Articles 24.1 and 24.2).[3]
Group stage
The top two teams of each group advanced 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):[3]
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);
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