The ASEAN Club Championship or ACC, also known as the Shopee Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an international club football competition organised by the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) between domestic champion clubs.[1] The competition is backed by AFC and FIFA.
Qualification to the competition is for champions clubs from countries affiliated with the AFF. However, the champions for the 2003 edition were an invitee club from India.[2][3][4]
History
The ASEAN Club Championship was first held as biannual tournament in 2003 and 2005.[5] The first edition was sponsored by LG Electronics, which was also known as LG Cup Asean Club Football Championship.[6] However, the tournament failed to gain traction due to lack of sponsors and conflict with the main calendar of the Asian Football Confederation. Plans to revive the tournament started as early as 2012.[7]
The tournament's revival was first proposed in 2019[1] but was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic.[8] The tournament was revived in April 2024 for the 2024–25 edition with a new title sponsor, Shopee.[9]
Competition format
The format of the ASEAN Club Championship was the same as that for the AFC Cup, each national football associations in Southeast Asia sending their champion club representing the domestic league winners. The participating teams were split into groups of several teams (depending on the actual number of participating teams in each group), with each team playing the others in the group in a round-robin format. The winners and runners-up of each group advanced to quarter-finals or semi-finals, depending on the number of groups. These finals were played as a knockout competition in the host country.
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