Asian Champions League to allow more foreign players

HONG KONG : Teams playing in the Asian Champions League will be allowed to field more foreign players from 2023 as the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) announced sweeping changes to the continental club championship on Friday.

In the 2023-24 edition, coaches will be allowed to field up to six foreign players in their starting line-ups for the first time, an increase of two from the current quota, and at least one of those players must be from another Asian nation.

The move follows an amendment to player registration regulations for this year's competition, which saw quotas on the number of foreign players permitted in squads submitted to the AFC scrapped.

The AFC also confirmed the competition would transition in September 2023 to an autumn-spring calendar for the first time since the Asian Champions League's inaugural season in 2002-03.

The competition has been played from March until November since 2004, although the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has forced amendments to that schedule over the last two years.

Preliminary rounds in the 2022 edition are due to begin next month, with the latter stages of the competition to be played in February 2023 as a result of scheduling issues created by Qatar's hosting of the World Cup in November and December this year.

(Reporting by Michael Church in Hong Kong; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)