AFC MA Ranking
The AFC Member Association Ranking is a ranking system launched by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 2014. The ranking is based on the results of teams participating in the last four years of the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup, as well as the member associations' FIFA ranking. The ranking is used for example to decide who plays who in the Champions League preliminary rounds.
The AFC also publishes a club ranking, which currently only has informational value.
The Member Association Ranking, or MA ranking is used to rank associations and also used for seeding teams in the competitions. It is also used to allocate the number of entries and entry points to the competitions. There are however many shifts each year with associations not meeting off field requirements.
The ranking consists of two parts. First the average points the member association's clubs over the past four year (weighing 90%), and the member association's FIFA World Ranking (weighing 10%). The leading team in each category is given 90 and 10 points respectively. All other associations are adjusted proportionally to the leading team. So the theoretical maximum of the ranking is 100 points, when the association's team have won the most points in the four year ranking and also are the number one AFC team in the FIFA rankings. Before 2017, the weighting for the FIFA ranking part was 30%.
Associations earn points in the ACL and ACC starting at the group stage by:
If an association has more than one team (at group stage), the average points per team are used for the MA ranking.
Starting from 2017 there is a small amount of points to be earned in the preliminary rounds.
As of 5 May 2017
Source:AFC
There are 46 ranked associations, the only unranked one are the Northern Mariana Islands, who are not a member of FIFA.
The club ranking is mostly an informative ranking and not used to seed clubs in the competitions for example.
The team ranking is calculated as points earned in the past four years plus 20% of the MA ranking points (proportionally adjusted so that the top nation here gets 20% of 70=14 points).
The club ranking in contrast to the MA ranking gives points for some of the preliminary and play-off rounds.
Top 20 clubs as of 1 April 2017
Source: Global Football Ranks
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