Asian club football will mark another pivotal milestone when the cast for the groundbreaking AFC Champions League Elite 2024-25 season assembles for the official League Stage draw ceremony on Friday, Aug. 16.
To be held at the InterContinental Kuala Lumpur, the event will reveal highly anticipated battles between Asia’s best 24 clubs for the maiden edition of the revamped men’s continental club competition.
The 32 clubs in AFC Champions League Two will also find out their fate at the event.
A pivotal change in the ACL Elite, the league stage format will be utilized for the first time in an AFC club competition and features two leagues of 12 teams across the West and East regions.
Scheduled to be played between Sept. 16, 2024 and Feb. 19, 2025, each team will face eight different opponents within its region in the form of four home and four away matches.
The line-up — comprising 22 teams that qualified directly and two preliminary stage winners — will be placed into two pots within each region, as below:
The West pot includes reigning champions Al-Ain FC (UAE), Al-Hilal (KSA), Al-Sadd (QAT), Persepolis FC (IRN), Pakhtakor (UZB), Al-Shorta (IRQ), Al-Nassr Club (KSA), Al-Rayyan SC (QAT), Esteghlal FC (IRN), Al-Wasl FC (UAE), Al-Ahli Saudi FC (KSA), as well as the winner of preliminary stage tie between Al-Gharafa SC (QAT) and Shabab Al-Ahli (UAE).
Meanwhile the East pot will comprise Vissel Kobe (JPN), Ulsan HD FC (KOR), Shanghai Port FC (CHN), Buriram United (THA), Central Coast Mariners (AUS), Johor Darul Ta’zim FC (MAS), Kawasaki Frontale (JPN), FC Pohang Steelers (KOR), Shanghai Shenhua FC (CHN), Yokohama F. Marinos (JPN), Gwangju FC (KOR), and the winner of preliminary stage tie between Shandong Taishan FC (CHN) and Bangkok United (THA).
The country protection principle will be in force and bespoke draw software will be used to prevent any deadlock situations from occurring.
The top eight finishers of each league progress to the round of 16, scheduled for March 2025, which will be followed by a unique centralized finals that sees all matches from the quarterfinals onwards being contested in Saudi Arabia between April 25 and May 4, 2025.
Meanwhile in AFC Champions League Two, which will featuring the greatest number of teams in any of the Asian Football Confederation’s club competitions, the new second-tier men’s tournament will comprise eight groups — four West, four East — of four teams each for the group stage, which will be played in a home-and-away round-robin format from Sept. 17 to Dec. 5.
The top two finishers from each group advance to the round of 16, to be played in February 2025. This will be followed by the quarterfinals on March 4 2025 and semifinals in April 2025, before the tournament culminates in a single-leg final on May 17, 2025.
