OFC Champions League
OFC Champions League | |
abbreviation | O-League |
Association | Oceania Football Confederation |
founding | 1987 (as OFC Champions Cup) |
First edition | 1987 |
Teams | 14 (+4 in qualification) |
Game mode | Round tournament (4 groups of 4 teams each) + semi-finals & final |
Title holder | Hienghène Sport (1st title) |
Record winner | Auckland City FC (9 titles) |
Current season | 2020 |
Website | www.oceaniafootball.com |
Qualification for | FIFA Club World Cup |
year | OFC Champions Cup winner |
---|---|
1987 | Adelaide City |
1999 | South Melbourne FC |
2001 | South Coast Wolves |
2005 | Sydney FC |
2006 | Auckland City FC |
season | OFC Champions League winners |
2007 | Waitakere United |
2007/08 | Waitakere United |
2008/09 | Auckland City FC |
2009/10 | Hekari United FC |
2010/11 | Auckland City FC |
2011/12 | Auckland City FC |
2012/13 | Auckland City FC |
2013/14 | Auckland City FC |
2014/15 | Auckland City FC |
2016 | Auckland City FC |
2017 | Auckland City FC |
2018 | Team Wellington |
2019 | Hienghène Sport |
2020 | pending |
The OFC Champions League is a football club competition in Oceania organized by the OFC and held for the first time in 1987 under the name OFC Champions Cup . It is comparable to the analogue Champions League competitions in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and Central America and South America, albeit significantly less powerful. Currently, the competition is only reserved for the champions from the seven higher performing OFC associations. These are Fiji , New Caledonia , New Zealand , Papua New Guinea , the Solomon Islands , Tahiti and Vanuatu . New Zealand has regularly had two participants since 2007; with the exception of 2010 as defending champion. A qualifying round was introduced from 2012 for the champions from the lower-performing associations American Samoa , Cook Islands , Samoa and Tonga . The winner is then qualified for a play-off for the OFC Champions League.
history
For the first time in 1987 in Adelaide, Australia, a competition between oceanic teams took place, which, however, was most likely only unofficial. The occasion for an official tournament under the aegis of the OFC was the FIFA Club World Cup 2000 , to which Oceania was also to send a participant. An OFC Champions Cup also took place in early 2001. However, the Club World Cup was canceled by FIFA and the competition was suspended for the time being.
As FIFA announced the return of the Club World Cup in 2005 , the OFC Champions Cup was reissued. With Sydney FC , an Australian team won for the fourth time in a row. It would also be the last time the Australian Football Association withdrew from the OFC and moved to the AFC that same year . In 2006, the New Zealand club Auckland City FC , which represented Oceania at the 2006 FIFA Club World Cup , won.
In 2007 the tournament was renamed and has been called the OFC Champions League ever since. Waitakere United won their first two wins .
mode
The following mode currently applies: The actual group stage with the respective champions and runners-up from the seven best-performing countries Fiji, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tahiti and Vanuatu is a qualifying round with the champions from American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga upstream. These four teams play in tournament form in a simple league round everyone against everyone. The first two finishers in the qualification complete the starting field of the sixteen teams in the group stage.
In this, in four groups of four teams each, at predetermined venues in tournament form, everyone against everyone is played once. The four group winners reach the semi-finals. Their winners, in turn, reach the final, which, like the semi-finals before, will be played in the first and second leg.
The winner qualifies for the FIFA Club World Cup , which takes place in December after the finals. There he will play an elimination game against the champions of the host country for participation in the quarter-finals.
Leaderboards
The most successful club is Auckland City FC , which won the last OFC Champions Cup (2006) and the first OFC competition without Australian participation before it was renamed the OFC Champions League. In 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 they won the competition again. The toughest competitors are national rivals Waitakere United and Team Wellington . The two reached the final of the OFC Champions League four times each, but unlike Auckland you couldn't win all of the games. Waitakere won the competition in 2007 and 2008 and Wellington in 2018.
The first four OFC Champions Cups were distributed among four Australian clubs, the two-time Australian champions South Coast Wolves and Sydney FC , three-time Australian champions Adelaide City and four-time Australian champions South Melbourne FC , whose triumph was ended by the change of association to Asia. With two exceptions, the clubs from New Zealand have dominated the competition since then. In 2010 the four-time Papua-New Guinean champions Hekari United FC beat their favorite team Waitakere United from New Zealand. In 2019, for the first time since 2006, no New Zealand club made it to the final. Hienghène Sport prevailed against AS Magenta in a purely New Caledonian final .
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