AFC revamps competitions

The Asian Football Confederation, in an executive committee meeting yesterday, decided to approve a proposal to cut down on the number of tournaments while increasing the opportunities for member nations to play more matches. As part of the decision the committee decided to scrap the AFC Challenge Cup, a tournament where Bangladesh used to participate, but increase the number of teams in the Asian Cup from 16 to 24 from the next edition (2019) and merge the World Cup Qualifiers with the qualification for the Asian Cup.
According to the decision, the 2014 AFC Challenge Cup which will be played in Maldives from May 19 to 30 will be the last edition of this competition.
Depending on the number of entries, the Member Associations will be divided into eight groups in the preliminary stage of the Asian Cup and the eight group winners and four second best teams among all the eight groups will qualify for the FIFA World Cup final round of qualifiers and also the AFC Asian Cup finals. Presently, only 10 teams battle it out in the final round of the FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
The next best 24 teams from the preliminary qualification round will compete for the remaining slots in the AFC Asian Cup finals in six groups of four teams each.  The final round of FIFA World Cup qualifiers and AFC Asian Cup qualifiers will be separated.
It means Bangladesh, who used to go through the World Cup pre-qualifiers, will play in the Asian Cup and will play against three other teams -- possibly more depending on the number of entries -- in the group phase on a home-and-away basis.
While this decision scraps the AFC Challenge Cup from Bangladesh's menu, it also makes sure teams like Bangladesh get to play more matches during the qualifiers.
The committee also approved the proposal to rank the Member Associations based on their national teams and clubs' performance over the last four years in AFC competitions. 30 per cent of points will be allocated for national teams' performances while seventy per cent for the clubs' showings.
The committee also decided to scrap the AFC President's Cup while introducing play-offs for the AFC Cup (the second-tier club competition) where the representative from Bangladesh will participate.  
Bangladesh are currently ranked 33rd among 47 countries affiliated to the AFC.