The drawing-lots event of the AFF Mitsubishi Electric Cup Championship, the most advanced competition in the ASEAN region, will be held on 21 May in Hanoi, Viet Nam.
The ASEAN Football Federation will hold the tournament from 23 November to 21 December, and the final stage will be held with a total of 10 teams. Since there are 11 Southeast Asian countries, the two lowest-ranked teams will play in the qualifiers, and only one team that wins will be allowed to compete in the finals. The tournament will be held in the same format as the last 2022 tournament, with five teams divided into two groups.
The host country will not select the tournament, and each participating team will have to play two home and two away games out of the four group games. The Myanmar team had the opportunity to compete in the final stage of the competition every time, but without achieving great success, they only reached the semifinals twice. The Myanmar team also left the group stage in the last 2022 tournament.
The ASEAN Football Federation has held this competition since 1996. Previously, it was held under the names of the Tiger Cup, ASEAN Championship and the ASEAN Suzuki Cup. Since 2022, the sponsor has changed, and Mitsubishi Electric is sponsoring it, so it has been renamed the AFF Mitsubishi Electric Cup.
The tournament has been held 14 times, and the Thai team is the most successful, having won seven times, while Singapore has won four times, Viet Nam twice, and Malaysia once. The current champion is Thailand, which has won four of the last five times. — Ko Nyi Lay/KZL
