Macau’s CPK to play at group stage of AFC Cup

Macau’s Chao Pak Kei (CPK) will be playing in this year’s group stage of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup.

The CPK will be playing at Group I, the only group dedicated to the East Zone of the AFC, battling for a place in the next stage with Taiwan’s Tainan City FC, Mongolia’s FC Ulaanbaatar and the last qualified Taichung Futuro FC, also from Taiwan.

Taichung Futuro FC qualified by beating the Macau team Monte Carlo by 1-2 in the pre-qualifiers playoff in a match played in at Taipa’s Olympic Stadium last week.

Taichung Futuro FC advanced to the AFC Cup 2023/24 group stage after two early goals, one  from Liang Meng-Hsin (minute 7), and the second from Kaoru Takayama (minute 16). They resisted a late comeback from the home side who only managed to narrow the score to 1-2 at the 77th minute with Brazilian Jackson finishing off a fine counter-attacking move with a powerful header.

It was the first foray for both teams into the AFC Cup with CPK qualifying as the 2022 “Liga de Elite” champions as well as being the Macau Cup winners, while Monte Carlo qualified for the AFC Cup playoff stage by having been the 2022 Liga de Elite runners-up.

The AFC Cup is divided into five zones (West, South, Central, ASEAN and East) with the Macau teams included in the last.

The next stage will see the winners of the ASEAN Zone move on to the inter-zone semi-finals, where they will be joined by the winners of Groups D, E, and I. A Knockout Stage draw will be conducted to determine the two ties for this stage.

The two victors will then play in the Inter-zone Final to earn the right to face the winners of the West Zonal Final in the AFC Cup 2023/24 final on May 5, 2024.