When "11 Champions League players" win the Asian Champions League trophy

Reporter Han Bing reported that the first AFC Champions League Elite League built by the AFC ended with Jeddah nationals taking up all the right time, place, and people and people. The "prefabricated" championship finally did not fall. Saudi football has become the biggest winner in the comprehensive "Europeanization" of the Asian Elite League. Relying on the dimensionality reduction advantage of at least 9 top foreign players, Saudi football won four major awards in the local event championship, best player, best scorer and best goalkeeper.

The first Asian Champions League Elite League is indeed "impressive". The three Saudi giants have been leading the league with at least 9 foreign players since the league stage, and finally won three seats with four AFC Champions League, which is unprecedented. But in such an AFC Champions League, looking at the familiar top foreign players’ names on the starting list, people will suddenly think that this is the “Asian Tour” of the Champions League team.

The first Asian Elite League has gone from the competition system, relaxing foreign aid restrictions to the final stage of the competition, and can be called "tailored" by the AFC for Saudi Arabia. Winning the AFC Champions League is indeed a achievements that Saudi Arabia, which urgently needs to prove its strength to the world. But is it really a flauntable achievement for Asian football to win the Asian championship?

AFC Champions League has become the "Asian Tour" of the Champions League

AFC Elite League copied the UEFA Champions League Swiss round system, and the full liberalization of foreign players has been completely Europeanized. It can be said that the essence of the AFC Elite League is actually the Champions League "Asian Tour" with Asian events as the shell and Champions League foreign players as the core. To use the language we are familiar with, it is "European Champions League to the countryside".

Take the final between Jeddah Nationals and Kawasaki Forward as an example. 9 of Jeddah Nationals' starting 11 players are foreign players, all from the European League, including the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Portuguese Super League, and Turkish Super League. In addition to Vega, Alexander and Belgian defender Dams who played in the second half, a total of 12 foreign players and 11 from the six major European leagues, only Alexander comes from the Brazilian giants Fruminense.

Riyadh Crescent also started in the semi-finals. All 11 registered foreign players in the AFC Elite League this season have played, only Neymar played less than 300 minutes due to injury. Riyadh won unexpectedly in the semi-finals by Kawasaki forward. In the first half, he underestimated the opponent and only started with 7 foreign players. He fell behind 1-2 and sent two foreign players in a row. There was no time to turn the situation around in the second half.

In comparison, in the AFC Champions League final last season, both teams had at least 6 local players present. In this season's AFC Champions League Elite League, the Saudi team has been fully "Europeanized" and has been beyond recognition. This also led to the forced follow-up of other Asian teams. Buriram United, one of the quarterfinals, also ranked first with 8 foreign players in Jeddah Nationals, with 9 foreign players in the first match. There were 3 foreign players appearing in the second half, and 10 foreign players appeared at the same time.

Qatar's giant THAAD also has as many as 11 foreign players, and 9 of them are from the European League. Dubai Prayer and Lai Yang, who entered the 1/8 finals, both had at least 13 registered foreign players, and Lai Yang had as many as 15. Malaysian giant Johor has registered as many as 18 foreign players, and has not counted 4 naturalized players. However, the strength of these teams cannot be compared with the wealthy Saudi Arabia top three. Although there are also Iran, Uzbekistan, and China, Japan and South Korea in East Asia maintain the proportion of starting with more than half of the local players, the "Europeanization trend" of Asian football's comprehensive reversal towards Saudi Arabia at the AFC Champions League level has become a foregone conclusion.

Saudi-style "Europeanization" expands the "rich and poor gap"

Although there were precedents in the AFC Champions League that some clubs in Qatar, the UAE, China and even Japan invested heavily in hiring super foreign players, they could generally adhere to the tone of "domestic league local players as the main players".

Therefore, the overall pattern of East and West Asian football in the AFC Champions League is relatively balanced. The AFC in the 1985/86 season promoted the Asian Club Cup in full swing, and restructured the AFC Champions League in 2002. In 38 years, the number of times the East and West Asian regions entered the finals was 41 to 37, with a general balance of power. Especially after the birth of the 2002/03 AFC Champions League, teams with low investment in Thailand, Australia, Iran, Syria and other leagues all had the opportunity to enter the AFC finals or even win the championship in a surprise. In short, it was because Asian countries had a lot of sense of participation.

However, as Saudi Arabia began to gradually increase its investment in the league and marked by the signing of Ronaldo in early 2023, the size of the gold-yuan football and foreign aid strength of the "Saudi Bros. League" has increased by one dimension, and the balance of the AFC Champions League has turned irreversibly towards Saudi Arabia.

From 2021 to the present, the last four Asian Champions Leagues have been Saudi Arabia's three finals and two wins. Although the Japanese team in East Asia has entered the AFC finals for three consecutive times, they only won the Riyadh Crescent with a small victory at home in 2022, but they have not yet signed up a lot of Riyadh New Moon. Last year and this year, both Yokohama Mariner and Kawasaki Forward lost convincingly. Kawasaki forward coach Shiro Hasegawa also sighed after the game: If you want to compete with the Saudi team in the short term, you must increase your investment.

The comprehensive "Europeanization" with Saudi Arabia as the core at the Asian Championship level will have a profound impact on Asian football.

On the one hand, the high bonuses besides competitive honors drive major leagues to join the foreign aid "arms race". The championship prize of US$12 million is more than 6 times the J1 League championship prize! Even if you only enter the top 8, it is tempting for most league teams in terms of revenue.

On the other hand, the Asian Champions League, which is almost entirely dominated by foreign players in the European League, may no longer be called the "AFC Champions League", but is just a "European Mercenary" team made up of European balloon stars and some rookies, on the Asian Tour. After all, if we use the traditional "local players plus a few foreign players" teaming model, we will not be able to compete with the "Champions League team".