Sport | Football association drops the ball on tournament registration

Duarte Alves (left) holds a trophy for the 2014 season

Local football champions Benfica Macau will probably be staying at home this year when 47 other Asian clubs advance to the play-off and preliminary rounds of the 2017 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League tournament.

Having topped the local football league for the third consecutive year, Benfica Macau was once again eligible to compete in the international tournament, reputed for bringing together some of the strongest football clubs in Asia.

Many expected the team’s participation following their entry in 2015, and after the team set a new record in last year’s tournament to become the first Macau club to win a match in the AFC Champions League with a 4-2 victory over Rovers FC of Guam.

Drawing on their growing success over the last two years, the top Macau club would have automatically qualified for the group stage this year alongside 31 of the finest Asian football teams. Moreover, three international matches from the competition would have been hosted in the MSAR, with the potential to attract tourists and sports fans to the city.

None of this is expected to happen now however, as the club was never registered to compete in the tournament. The reason: an administrative or communication error between the AFC and the Macau Football Association (Macau FA).

Benfica Macau representatives say that the Macau FA is to blame. They allege that the association misunderstood registration documents and failed to nominate the club for the tournament which resulted in the forfeiture of its spot. However, the Macau FA lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of the AFC, which it claims has already admitted partial responsibility for the “miscommunication from both sides.”

Duarte Alves, the director of Benfica Macau who describes himself as being responsible for the daily operations of the club, told the Times that the administrative failure arose because of a change in the way that clubs are enlisted in the tournament this year. Unlike in previous years where eligible clubs registered themselves, last year the policy was amended so that local associations must enlist teams directly with the AFC.

Alves blames the Macau FA for the failure which he regards as an “embarrassment”, “a missed opportunity to promote Macau” and a letdown for the football players of Benfica Macau, most of whom are local residents.

“After the [AFC] Champions League last year, I spoke to the Macau Football Association to get us a spot in this year’s [2017] tournament. The association wasn’t aware that a change in the policy had occurred […] which means that the AFC speaks with football associations now, not with the clubs,” Alves told the Times in an interview last week. “I checked with the AFC multiple times [over a period of a] few months and they told me there had still not been any communication. However, the deadline was in September [2016] and Macau did not apply in time.”

“I don’t know if its negligence at this point,” he continued, “but for 30-something countries to reply and Macau not to reply to a letter… I think it’s embarrassing.”

For a football team that has topped the local rankings for the last three consecutive years, Alves says that going abroad to face tougher, international opponents is the only way to grow the team’s players as professional footballers. “We are playing at an international level with local players,” he said, claiming that such an act requires regular training and development. “That’s not like the Grand Prix, where we are [mostly] the host for non-local competitors.”

The AFC Champions League is the ideal platform for acquiring this sort of experience, but with the team sitting this one out, it will be another year before Benfica Macau can be tested in such a tournament.

Daniel Delgado de Sousa,  vice-president of the Macau FA, admitted to the Times last night that the failure to register Benfica Macau in the tournament was the result of a “miscommunication” between the local football association and the AFC.

However, he argued that a letter from the AFC – sent after the initial qualification rounds for the tournament – did not specify that the new regulations would apply to teams that had already qualified, such as Benfica Macau.

“The letter did not mention that it included teams that had already qualified,” said Delgado de Sousa. “We assumed that the changes would not apply [in this case].”

“Immediately after discovering the problem, we sent a letter to the AFC to get more information and the AFC admitted that there was a miscommunication from both sides,” he explained.

But the miscommunication does not stop there. While the director of Benfica Macau told the Times last week that multiple attempts to contact the Macau FA had yielded nothing but silence, Delgado de Sousa said that he and Alves have been in regular communication over the last few weeks.

“We still don’t have an official answer,” claimed Alves. “For three weeks I’ve formally asked the association and there has been no reply.”

“I am disappointed with what happened,” he said, adding that the experience has shaken his confidence in Macau institutions. “Not being able to go to the tournament because someone looked at the paper incorrectly – maybe due to a lack of English [language knowledge] – I think that’s very serious.”

Asked about the allegations of ‘radio silence’, the Macau FA vice-president insisted that the association and Benfica Macau have been in contact on several occasions “in the last few weeks.”

The Premier Asian Club tournament

The AFC Champions League is an annual football competition organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the top performing club teams across much of the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. It is commonly regarded as the premier club tournament in Asia, equivalent to Europe’s UEFA Champions League. Each year, more than 45 club teams compete for a spot among the 32 sides of the group stage of the tournament’s finals. Duarte Alves said that, had the Macau Football Association submitted the relevant documents, his team would have automatically qualified this year for the group stage because of their recurring presence and strong performance in previous editions. Moreover, due to the improvement in Macau football in the past few years, the territory would have been permitted to send two teams to the tournament, he claimed.

‘Missed opportunity’ for sport, tourism development

With the Macau titleholder’s non-participation in the AFC Champions League, Benfica Macau director Duarte Alves said that authorities have effectively passed up the chance to host three international matches in the city, which could have been conducive to both sport and tourism development.

Benfica Macau “would have gone straight to the group stage and played a minimum of six international matches,” he explained. “Three of those would have been played in Macau [which] would have fit in with the government objective of promoting the MSAR as an international city. This could have been a big sporting-tourism event brought to the city.”

“This is 100 percent a missed opportunity to promote Macau for both tourism and sport,” he said.

Meanwhile, the opportunity would have been highly beneficial to the club itself.

Alves claimed that it would have provided a great deal of experience to the team’s players, helped to secure sponsorship for the club and boosted their chances of progressing through the tournament due to the sporting “home advantage.”

“Hosting three home matches also inspires the youth in Macau [to take up sports],” he said. “It’s a chain reaction that could have been triggered.”

Delgado de Sousa would not comment on whether the missed opportunity to host three international matches in the territory was a disappointment to the Macau FA. He said that he is “grateful for having sent a team to the qualifying round,” and that his association can not “only focus on one team […] we must look at Macau football development in general.”