Kuala Lumpur: A redraw for the men’s football tournament at Asian Games in Indonesia will take place on Wednesday, after organisers left out two countries in the first draw earlier in July.
The new draw will take place at the headquarters of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) here in Malaysia.
In the first draw held on July 5, there were six groups of four nations, with the top two nations from those six groups, plus the four best third-seeded teams, set to reach the round of 16.
But the AFC ordered Indonesian organisers to conduct a redraw after learning that the UAE and Palestine were left out.
With this redraw the number of participating teams will be 26. Groups A, C, D and F will have four nations each, and Groups B and E will each have five countries.
The Asian Games run from August 18 to September 2, but group play in football will begin a few days ahead.
Meanwhile, Indonesia hopes hosting the upcoming Asian Games will help revive the fortunes of its troubled national football team and act as a springboard for their qualification for the 2024 Paris Olympics, the nation’s FA said.
Indonesia were barred from international football in 2015 due to government meddling in their domestic league, shutting them out of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup and 2019 Asian Cup.
Fifa lifted the ban in 2016, but the men’s team are currently languishing at 164th in the world, slotted between Belize and Fiji, despite the game’s huge popularity in a country of more than 250 million people.
“Asian Games is a starting point and PSSI (Football Association of Indonesia) wants to achieve more than that. If we have to set a short-term plan that would be the Olympics in 2024,” Joko Driyono, deputy chairman of the PSSI, said.
Driyono said the PSSI and the government were committed over the next three to five years to improving infrastructure for football at all levels to support the target.
Spain’s former under-21 coach Luis Milla was appointed manager of Indonesia at the start of 2017 in order to overhaul the national squad.
The Asian Games are expected to draw nearly 17,000 athletes and officials, and more than 100,000 spectators.
— Agencies
