Asian Cup soccer tournament in Saudi Arabia postponed because of conflict in the Middle East

The 2027 Asian Cup soc­cer tour­na­ment has been de­layed al­most a year in the wake of re­cent dead­ly at­tacks on host coun­try Sau­di Ara­bia, be­com­ing the biggest sports event to be post­poned amid the con­flict in the Mid­dle East.

The Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion is­sued a state­ment Tues­day that af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with Sau­di or­ga­niz­ers it de­cid­ed to push the start of its mar­quee con­ti­nen­tal cham­pi­onship back from Jan. 7 to Dec. 23.

The de­ci­sion came to seem like­ly af­ter de­vel­op­ments in re­cent weeks raised ques­tions over whether the 2034 World Cup host na­tion is cur­rent­ly safe enough for a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al soc­cer tour­na­ment.

Lo­cal or­ga­niz­ers agreed to resched­ule in “cir­cum­stances aris­ing from de­vel­op­ments in the re­gion, in­clud­ing sub­stan­tial lo­gis­ti­cal com­plex­i­ties and trav­el dis­rup­tions,” the AFC said. “Ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances have been cre­at­ed for the or­ga­ni­za­tion and de­liv­ery of the com­pe­ti­tion as orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled, mak­ing the post­pone­ment nec­es­sary in the in­ter­est of all par­tic­i­pat­ing teams, of­fi­cials, spec­ta­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers.”

The new dates — Dec. 23, 2027 to Jan. 21, 2028, end­ing just days be­fore the Is­lam­ic holy month of Ra­madan opens — will be sub­mit­ted to FI­FA for ap­proval. FI­FA sign-off for resched­uled dates is need­ed to man­date when clubs world­wide must re­lease their play­ers to na­tion­al-team du­ty.

The month­long tour­na­ment was sched­uled to fea­ture 24 teams play­ing match­es in eight venues across Riyadh, Jed­dah, and Kho­bar. Iran qual­i­fied and has been grouped with Syr­ia, Chi­na and Kyr­gyzs­tan for the league stage. The Saud­is, Aus­tralia, South Ko­rea and Japan were top seeds in oth­er groups.

The AFC’s an­nounce­ment end­ed months of spec­u­la­tion about a post­pone­ment which, un­til re­cent­ly, had been re­ject­ed by lo­cal or­ga­niz­ers.

Muhammed Q. Al­gham­di, a spokesman for the or­ga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, last month told mem­bers at an AFC meet­ing in Tokyo that “dai­ly life is on­go­ing in Sau­di Ara­bia.”

Be­fore that meet­ing, AFC Pres­i­dent Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khal­i­fa had in­di­cat­ed po­ten­tial for the Asian Cup to be post­poned by a year if nec­es­sary and said a fi­nal de­ci­sion could be de­layed un­til late No­vem­ber.

Oth­er sports dis­rup­tions

The Sau­di For­mu­la 1 Grand Prix was can­celed this sea­son, and the Bahrain race was re­lo­cat­ed to Malaysia be­cause of safe­ty con­cerns re­lat­ed to the Iran war. Races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi are still on the cal­en­dar, and F1 has kept Sau­di Ara­bia on the 2027 sched­ule with a grand prix planned there in March.

The WTA Fi­nals, the sea­son-end­ing event in women’s ten­nis, was moved from Sau­di Ara­bia to In­di­an Wells, Cal­i­for­nia.

Asia’s mar­quee con­ti­nen­tal club soc­cer tour­na­ment — the AFC Cham­pi­ons League Elite — has al­ready been dis­rupt­ed.

A game be­tween Cris­tiano Ronal­do ’s Al-Nassr and Uzbek­istan’s Neftchi Fer­gana was de­layed on Oct. 12 af­ter Sau­di Ara­bia’s Civ­il De­fense is­sued a se­cu­ri­ty alert. An Al-Nassr’s home game last week was post­poned when against Al-Wasl of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates didn’t trav­el to Riyadh.

Im­pact on Asian Cup teams

Tues­day’s post­pone­ment means na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions across Asia face de­ci­sions about coach­ing staff with the orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled Asian Cup mark­ing the end of a four-year cy­cle be­fore at­ten­tion turns to­ward qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2030 World Cup.

Aus­tralia coach Tony Popovic, who guid­ed the Soc­ceroos to the knock­out stage of the 2026 World Cup, turned down a four-year con­tract ex­ten­sion in Sep­tem­ber in fa­vor of a short­er deal through the Asian Cup.

“It was my choice to go un­til the Asian Cup,” Popovic said at the time, say­ing a de­ci­sion on his longer-term fu­ture would then be made with the Aus­tralian fed­er­a­tion.

“I know the lega­cy that I will leave be­hind,” he said. “And if it’s some­one else that takes it for­ward, that’s fine. If it’s me, great, we agree to do this to­geth­er.”

South Ko­rea is al­so in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion. Af­ter a dis­ap­point­ing World Cup, the Ko­rea Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion ap­point­ed Robert Moreno as in­ter­im coach in Sep­tem­ber.

The for­mer Spain coach was giv­en a con­tract through the end of No­vem­ber, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a two or three-month ex­ten­sion to cov­er the Asian Cup. A strong tour­na­ment was ex­pect­ed to lead to a per­ma­nent ap­point­ment but now the KFA will have to make a de­ci­sion with­out see­ing how the team per­forms in the con­ti­nen­tal cham­pi­onship which it hasn’t won since 1960.

Af­ter the World Cup, Japan gave coach Ha­jime Moriya­su an ex­ten­sion through the Asian Cup, with un­der-21 coach Go Oi­wa then due to take over.

“Mr. Moriya­su has al­ready shown that he can win in Asia, and we hope he can do so again by win­ning the Asian Cup,” Japan Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Tsuneya­su Miyamo­to said when the ap­point­ment was an­nounced. “We worked back­ward from the goal of win­ning the Asian Cup. As for Mr. Oi­wa, as the U-21 man­ag­er, we want­ed him to fo­cus on win­ning the Asian Games and to re­main ful­ly com­mit­ted to the U-21 team un­til the end of the year.”

In Iraq, coach Gra­ham Arnold signed an ex­ten­sion af­ter the World Cup that was al­so de­signed to run through the Asian Cup. —SEOUL, South Ko­rea (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOHN DUER­DEN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press