The Nations League is coming: The AFC’s plan to reshape Asian football

A year on from their initial announcement, the AFC will tomorrow present its proposals for a new AFC Nations League competition to member associations.

The Asian Game has seen the full briefing document, which also includes proposed changes to the AFC’s club competitions, as the AFC prepares for one of the biggest shake-ups of the Asian international calendar in over a generation.

The change goes further than merely introducing what was expected to be a new competition to an already bloated Asian football calendar, instead it integrates and reshapes the current qualification cycle.  A Nations League tiered format will become the single structure for future international football in Asia, increasing competitive game time for all, creating more evenly contested matches, and introducing a new biennial showpiece finals series.

Through the changes, the AFC’s ambition is considerable. It sets out a brave, systematic change; but it raises familiar questions of whether the format can truly strike the right balance between development, competition and fan interest.

A Nations League, but not as you know it

AFC’s announcement that it would introduce an Asian equivalent of the Nations League may have appeared out of the blue back in December, but in truth, the idea has been in the offing for some time.

Back in 2021, I presented the challenges of adopting a like-for-like format, first introduced in Europe in 2018, highlighting the consequences of an expanded calendar, and a reduction in inter-continental exposure. But as the concept spread elsewhere, any remaining resistance to the idea in Asia was always going to be difficult to sustain.

It must be said, however, the AFC’s stated mission for the competition was ambitious:

“The (Nations League) aims to ensure regular, meaningful international football during FIFA International Match Windows, promote competitive balance through level-based matchups, improve cost efficiencies through centralised coordination, and provide clearer progression pathways for National Teams.”

What was crucial about the direction, was the prominence of development, sitting at the heart of their plans, no small challenge across a continent as geographically vast and competitively uneven as Asia.

While the proposed solution carries the Nations League monicker, this is not simply an Asian version of the established European model. Rather than being a standalone tournament that fills up empty international friendly spots, the proposed three-tier structure will become the central organising framework for international football, feeding directly into AFC Asian Cup and FIFA World Cup qualification.

With such significant reform, the proposals are lengthy – and often overly complex – with multiple qualification routes, playoffs and evolving tier participation. But stripped back, the key changes can be summarised as such:

• Asian international football will be divided into three tiers. Tier 1 and Tier 2 will each contain 18 teams, with the remaining 11 nations forming Tier 3.
• Tier 1 and Tier 2 will operate in a League Format – operating in the ‘Swiss-model’ adopted by the AFC Champions League Elite. Tier 3 will instead be divided into three smaller round-robin groups.
• Promotion and relegation will take place between the Tiers every two years. The bottom two teams in Tier 1 and Tier 2 will be relegated automatically, with the top two in Tier 2 and Tier 3 also automatically promoted. Teams finishing 3rd-6th and 13th-16th will enter promotion/relegation playoffs.
• Performance in the league phase will directly feed into Asian Cup and World Cup qualification, with only minor additional playoffs required for the remaining qualification spots.
• With a shift in Asian Cup scheduling, the upcoming four years will act as a transitional model, with the current World Cup qualification structure largely being retained on the Road to 2030; with the upcoming Round 1 and Round 2 stages set to determine initial tier placements. After a staggered introduction, a fully operating Nations League system will begin in earnest in 2030/31.

For such a significant systematic change, some aspects do remain consistent with the outgoing calendar.

For the top tier nations, the increase in minimum competitive fixtures is relatively modest (up two matches from 16 to 18 over the four years). For those lower down the tiers however, the change is more significant: with a more considerable increase in match play, and more regular competitive football against opponents closer to their own level. The proposals’ considerable focus on supporting the lower ranked nations is long overdue, and commendable in its execution.

A positive step forward, but questions remain

Despite a number of progressive changes, there are compromises to be made; the biggest being the extent to which future qualification campaigns become tied to the Nations League structure.

For Tier 3 nations in particular, proposals offer no direct Asian Cup or World Cup qualification pathway. As a result, competitive fixtures against higher-ranked opponents are eliminated. Under the proposed structure, it is highly unlikely that nations such as Japan and Sri Lanka would ever meet in competitive football again, reflecting the growing separation between the different tiers.

A nation can theoretically win every single competitive match over the course of a four-year cycle and still find itself unable to qualify to the continent’s two biggest international tournaments. That may in the end become a worthwhile trade-off for a system centred around long-term development, but it’s a difficult pill to swallow for true purists.

There is also a question over what happens to the wider international calendar. The AFC has retained space for friendlies, and the extended windows can accommodate additional matches, but the Nations League structure inevitably becomes the dominant feature of international football.

For the likes of Japan, Australia, Iran and Korea Republic, the ability to regularly test themselves against opposition from outside the continent remains critical to Asia’s success at the World Cup. Failure in North America earlier this year didn’t come down to talent, but preparation and experience. If an increase focus is put on competition within Asia, space and incentives need to be granted to continue pushing Asian football against the rest of the world.

The AFC’s answer for now, however, is to focus primarily on making the Asian calendar work better on its own terms. The proposal continues to reject calls to separate West and East Asian regions for international football, also avoiding a five-zone structure for lower tiers, on the basis that both would create uneven competitions and restrict matches between different parts of the continent.

As someone who has remained deeply cynical of the Nations League concept since its arrival on the world stage, there is something to appreciate in the approach taken by the AFC. This is not an attempt to directly copy UEFA, which we have seen all too regularly before from the confederation. The AFC has stuck to its initial principles of increasing meaningful matches between similarly ranked nations, and tried to make it fit the particular problems of Asian football.

Whether it is deemed a success, however, will likely depend on engagement of fans, with the doubling down on the AFC’s preference for centralised final series standing out as a distinct flashpoint.

The defining moment of moving to a Nations League format, will be a centrally held final series, every two years for the continent’s best four nations to compete for the new title. It creates a fitting crescendo to the League Stage, but it also risks repeating a problem already all too familiar from the AFC’s club competitions: creating a final event that works practically without necessarily generating the same sense of occasion for supporters.

There are obvious limitations, but the broader proposals address one of the fundamental weaknesses of Asian international football: too many nations having spent too much of the calendar either playing matches of limited consequence or waiting for qualification campaigns to come back around again.

The first test is whether this structure can translate into meaningful engagement. If it does, Asia could emerge from the next decade with a deeper and more competitive international game.

That, rather than the simple introduction of another trophy, is ultimately what will determine whether the AFC’s Nations League experiment will work.