Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Kuala Lumpur: The 25th AFC Congress concluded on Friday with the first gathering under the new AFC President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa running smoothly.
In addition to the approval of the budget for the 2013-2016 cycle there were a number of amendments to the AFC Statutes proposed by the Executive Committee that were agreed to by the delegates. In addition to some formalities relating to grammatical changes there were amendments to the AFC’s Standing Committees that were introduced to reflect the realties of their function and operation.
The Finance and Marketing Committee has been separated into two separate entities while the AFC Coaching Committee work will form part of Technical Committee as is the current practice. The Vision Asia Committee becomes Development Committee to reflect administration change and FIFA terminology while the Futsal and Beach Soccer Committee will incorporate Beach Soccer in its scope to reflect administration practice.
The Congress also approved the introduction of the AFC Beach Soccer Championship with details about the new tournament to be introduced in due course.
AFC General Secretary Dato’ Alex Soosay presented his report on the achievements of of the confederation since the last Congress in 2011 which was held in Doha, Qatar and although his findings reflected the AFC and its competitions in an impressively positive light he warned the delegates that they cannot afford to rest on their laurels as they continue to take Asian football forward and fight against the scourge of match-fixing and all kinds of discrimination in the modern game