According to the latest information, AFF is planning to invite the Kyrgyzstan team to participate in the AFF Cup.
The Kyrgyzstan team was invited by the AFF to participate in the AFF Cup.
If this becomes a reality, it will be a historic change for the tournament as it will be the first time a country outside of Southeast Asia will participate in the AFF Cup.
In previous editions, the AFF Cup had a maximum of 10 participating teams and was divided into two groups to compete.
However, Southeast Asia has 11 countries and if Kyrgyzstan agrees to this offer, it is likely that from the next AFF Cup, there will be 12 teams participating.
With 12 teams, AFF will likely be divided into 3 groups (4 teams each) to compete.
The presence of Kyrgyzstan is expected to help raise the quality of the tournament.
On the FIFA rankings at the moment, Kyrgyzstan is ranked 96th, only lower than the Vietnamese team and higher than the remaining teams in the region.
But this will certainly also reduce the chances of top teams like Vietnam, Thailand or Indonesia competing for the championship.
In recent years, Southeast Asian football has been developing quite rapidly and has had initial achievements.
The most typical is that the two teams Thailand and Vietnam entered the final qualifying round of the World Cup.
However, the level of expertise of football teams in the region still has a huge gap with leading countries in the continent such as Japan, South Korea, Iran or Saudi Arabia.
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