AFC Challenge Cup

AFC Challenge Cup
Association	AFC
First edition	2006
Last event	2014
Teams	8th
Game mode	Round tournament (2 groups of 4 teams each) / knockout system (from semi-finals)
Title holder	Palestine
Record winner	North Korea (2 wins)
Qualification for	Soccer Asian Championship

The AFC Challenge Cup was a biennial football tournament hosted by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for national teams from the continent's underperforming countries. The first event took place in 2006 in Bangladesh . Since 2008, the respective winners of the last two draws have qualified for the Asian Cup , which takes place every four years . The record winner with two titles is North Korea .

The first competition took place with 16 teams, which determined the eight participants in the knockout round in four groups with four teams. From the second event onwards, only eight teams took part and a qualification took place in which the eventual host also had to qualify, but some teams were directly qualified for the final round. In 2014, the host was determined in advance and no longer had to qualify.

Due to the increase in the number of final round participants in the Asian Cup from 16 to 24 and the merging of the first two qualifying rounds for the Asian Cup with the World Cup qualification, the competition will no longer be held.

The tournaments at a glance

year	host	final			Game for third place
		winner	Result	Second place	third place	Result	fourth place
2006	Bangladesh	Tajikistan	4-0	Sri Lanka		not carried out
2008	India	India	4: 1	Tajikistan	North Korea	4-0	Myanmar
2010	Sri Lanka	North Korea	1: 1 n.V. , 5: 4 i. E.	Turkmenistan	Tajikistan	1-0	Myanmar
2012	Nepal	North Korea	2: 1	Turkmenistan	Philippines	4: 3	Palestine
2014	Maldives	Palestine	1-0	Philippines	Maldives	1: 1 a.d. , 8: 7 i. E.	Afghanistan