{"id":26376,"date":"2021-10-21T13:16:33","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T04:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/?p=26376"},"modified":"2021-10-21T13:16:33","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T04:16:33","slug":"nine-liga-1-clubs-receive-afc-club-licenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2021\/10\/21\/nine-liga-1-clubs-receive-afc-club-licenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Nine Liga 1 Clubs Receive AFC Club Licenses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In an improvement compared to last year, nine out of the Liga 1 Indonesia&#8217;s 18 teams were given AFC Club Licenses on Tuesday. This means that should any of the nine clubs finish within the top two places of this season&#8217;s Liga 1, they will qualify for the 2022 AFC Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In order for a club to receive an AFC Club License, they must fulfill all five criteria set by the confederation &#8211; sporting, infrastructure, personnel and administrative, legal, and financial. All 18 clubs of the 2021\/22 Liga 1 season applied for an AFC Club License, but following a meeting on Tuesday from the Football Federation of Indonesia (PSSI)&#8217;s Executive Committee, only half of those receive an AFC Club License.<\/p>\n<p>Still, compared to previous years, this has been a huge improvement in terms of the number of clubs being deemed eligible for an AFC Club License.<\/p>\n<p>Usual suspects Arema FC and Persib Bandung were among the Liga 1&#8217;s AFC Club License recipients, having always been licensed by the AFC since 2017. Last year&#8217;s recipients Bhayangkara FC, Borneo FC, Bali United, and Persija Jakarta were also awarded AFC Club Licenses, the latter having been upgraded from &#8220;provisional&#8221; to &#8220;unconditional.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Having not received an AFC Club License in 2020, both Madura United and Persebaya Surabaya will be pleased that they are officially licensed by the AFC, while a surprise addition to the Liga 1 clubs receiving their AFC Club License was PSM Makassar.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<em>Juku Eja\u00a0<\/em>were plagued with financial troubles since the 2020 Liga 1 season was shelved due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to the point that <a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2021\/08\/15\/psm-could-be-barred-from-this-seasons-liga-1\/\">they were almost unable to participate in this season&#8217;s Liga 1 due to unpaid wages<\/a> as well as having <a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2021\/02\/16\/psm-slapped-with-registration-ban-by-fifa\/\">a registration ban slapped onto them by FIFA<\/a>. PSM&#8217;s Andi Mattalatta Stadium had fallen into a state of severe disrepair following the league&#8217;s cancellation, however, the club had been working hard in renovating their stadium to meet AFC standards, as well as striking up a partnership with the government of the nearby city of Parepare to use their BJ Habibie Stadium for the time being.<\/p>\n<p>PSM had also settled their arrears before the start of the season, thus allowing them to receive their AFC Club License.<\/p>\n<p>Notable omissions from Indonesia&#8217;s AFC Club License recipients include cash-strapped Persipura Jayapura, who had received a license back in 2020. PSS Sleman,<a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2021\/10\/01\/drama-as-pss-general-director-threatens-club-relocation-after-hearing-demands-to-sack-head-coach\/\"> whose management is locked in a tense stand-off with the club&#8217;s own fans<\/a>, were also denied an AFC Club License. The Liga 1&#8217;s newest additions &#8211; Persik Kediri, Persita Tangerang, and Persiraja Banda Aceh &#8211; did not receive their licenses as well, while the Indonesian Army-backed Persikabo 1973 was also denied their continental license.<\/p>\n<p>However, the biggest omission was PSIS Semarang, who have taken the Liga 1 by storm this season. The\u00a0<em>Mahesa Jenar\u00a0<\/em>are the current leaders of the league, having been unbeaten in their eight matches so far with five wins and three draws to their name. It was speculated that PSIS&#8217; failure to receive a continental license was down to their lack of infrastructure &#8211; their Jatidiri Stadium was still undergoing massive renovations until this day, while their Citarum Stadium is deemed unsuitable for AFC matches.<\/p>\n<p>Despite having used the Moch. Soebroto Stadium in Magelang for their matches in recent years, as well as the presence of Persis Solo&#8217;s newly-renovated Manahan Stadium within their locale, PSIS were reluctant to &#8220;bend the rules&#8221; for their AFC Club License application, though they still have two weeks to file an appeal for a provisional license similar to what Persija did last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an improvement compared to last year, nine out of the Liga 1 Indonesia&#8217;s 18 teams were given AFC Club Licenses on Tuesday. This means that should any of the nine clubs finish within the top two places of this season&#8217;s Liga 1, they will qualify for the 2022 AFC Cup. In order for a club to receive an AFC Club License, they must fulfill all five criteria set by the confederation &#8211; sporting, infrastructure, personnel and administrative, legal, and financial. All 18 clubs of the 2021\/22 Liga 1 season applied for an AFC Club License, but following a meeting on Tuesday from the Football Federation of Indonesia (PSSI)&#8217;s Executive &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2021\/10\/21\/nine-liga-1-clubs-receive-afc-club-licenses\/\" class=\"tribe-more-link\">Continue reading &#8220;Nine Liga 1 Clubs Receive AFC Club Licenses&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":25259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,26],"tags":[487,77,951,841,91,643,512,1740,523,1018,428,901,530,301,95],"class_list":["post-26376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indonesia","category-southeast-asia","tag-arema-fc","tag-bali-united","tag-bhayangkara-fc","tag-borneo-fc","tag-indonesia","tag-indonesia-liga-1","tag-liga-1","tag-liga-1-indonesia","tag-madura-united","tag-persebaya-surabaya","tag-persib-bandung","tag-persija-jakarta","tag-psm-makassar","tag-pssi","tag-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26377,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26376\/revisions\/26377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}