SAFF U16 Championship to be Held in May in India

SAFF nations decided to hold the 2013 SAFF U16 Championship in Goa, India. The championship will be held in May 2012. This is the second SAFF U16 Championship, however, this is the first time Afghanistan is participating.

This tournament can be a good preparatory camp for the AFC U16 Qualifiers which be held in September 2013.

2013 SAFF Championship Dates Announced

The next edition of the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship from September 20th to October 2nd in Nepal. The decision was made in the SAFF executive committee meeting held in Kuala Lampur in a side event of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) executive committee this evening.

Earlier this year, the executive committee decided that Nepal would host the next edition of SAFF Championship.

Nepal hosted first SAFF Championship back in 1997 which India won defeating Maldives in the final.

The last edition of SAFF Men's Championship was held at New Delhi, India where India lifted the trophy by beating Afghanistan.

Eight South Asian countries will take part in the prestigious event of SAARC region.

Draw for AFC Challenge Cup Qualifier on December 11

The draw for 2014 AFC Challenge Cup Qualifier is taking place on December 11, the website of Tajikistan Football Federation reports. AFC initially announced the draw will be held on October 25, however,it gave an automatic qualification to the host and thus the draw was postponed. Yesterday, AFC awarded the hosting rights to Maldives. 18 countries, including Afghanistan, will participate in the draw. The format of the qualifier is not announced yet.

AFC Awards Challenge Cup Hosting Rights to the Maldives

The AFC Challenge Cup 2014 is not going out of south asia. This time, Maldives won the hosting rights after Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal hosted the previous editions. Today the AFC Competitions Committee decided to give the hosting rights of the 2014 AFC Challenge Cup to Maldives. The other applicants were Tajikistan, Philippines and India, but AFC shortlisted only the Philippines and the Maldives. By virtue of this decision, the Maldives is qualifying automatically to the main event of the Challenge Cup and leaves the other 18 members to fight for other 7 places. The Committee also decided to exclude North Korea from the Challenge Cup. In addition, the winners of the 2016 and 2018 Challenge Cups will not qualify to the Asia Cup 2019. Instead, they should enter into play-offs with the best two teams which will fail to qualify to the Asia Cup. AFC has not announced the date for the draw of the qualifier, however, some reports say the draw would be held tomorrow.

Football Afghanistan, a New Beginning

It is a new beginning and I will provide you updates on the football in Afghanistan. I have stopped updating the blog some 18 months ago, since there have been websites launched to give us updates. Unfortunately, those websites stopped working after some time. You will get the latest update here from now on.