The 2019 AFC U-16 Women's Championship will be the 8th edition of the AFC U-16 Women's Championship, the biennial international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the women's under-16 national teams of Asia. The tournament will be held in Thailand between 15–28 September 2019,[1] with a total of eight teams competing.
Four teams will qualify directly for the final tournament: the hosts and the top three of 2017. The other four spots will be determined by the qualifying stage.
A total of 30 teams will enter the qualifying stage. Due to the increased number of teams, two qualification rounds are scheduled for the first time. The first round is scheduled for 15–23 September 2018,[2] and the second round is scheduled for 23 February – 3 March 2019.[3]
Qualified teams
The following teams have qualified for the tournament.
The eight teams are drawn into two groups of four teams. The teams are seeded according to their performance in the 2017 AFC U-16 Women's Championship final tournament and qualification, with the hosts Thailand automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.
Players born between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2005 are eligible to compete in the tournament. Each team must register a squad of minimum 16 players and maximum 23 players, minimum two of whom must be goalkeepers (Regulations Articles 24.1 and 24.2).[4]
Group stage
The top two teams of each group advance to the semi-finals.
Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 9.3):[4]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they met in the last round of the group;
Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
