The 2020 AFC Champions League was the 39th edition of Asia's premier club football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and the 18th under the current AFC Champions League title.
Ulsan Hyundai won their second Champions League title by defeating Persepolis 2âÂÂ1 in the final. Ulsan automatically qualify for the 2021 AFC Champions League (although they had already qualified through their domestic performance), the first time since 2008 that the AFC Champions League holders were guaranteed automatic qualification in the following year. They also earned the right to play in the 2020 FIFA Club World Cup in Qatar.
The tournament was the last to involve 32 teams during the group stage, which increased to 40 teams in 2021.
The competition was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia after group stage matches on 4 March 2020, and restarted on 14 September 2020. All matches after the restart were played in Qatar, with the final played at the Al Janoub Stadium in the city of Al Wakrah.
Al-Hilal of Saudi Arabia were the defending champions, but the club effectively withdrew from the competition when they could not name the required 13 players for their final group stage match, as all but 11 players had tested positive for COVID-19. For the first time, the video assistant referee (VAR) system was in use from the quarter-finals onwards.
The 46 AFC member associations (excluding the associate member Northern Mariana Islands) were ranked based on their national team's and clubs' performance over the last four years in AFC competitions, with the allocation of slots for the 2019 and 2020 editions of the AFC club competitions determined by the 2017 AFC rankings (Entry Manual Article 2.3):
For the 2020 AFC Champions League, the associations were allocated slots according to their association ranking which was published on 15 December 2017, which took into account their performance in the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup, as well as their national team's FIFA World Rankings, during the period between 2014 and 2017.
The following 52 teams from 23 associations entered the competition.
In the following table, the number of appearances and last appearance count only those since the 2002âÂÂ03 season (including qualifying rounds), when the competition was rebranded as the AFC Champions League.
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only some of the group stage matches on matchdays 1âÂÂ3 in February and March were played as scheduled, and all matches on matchdays 4âÂÂ6 were postponed until further notice. The round of 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals were also initially moved to 10âÂÂ12 and 24âÂÂ26 August, 14âÂÂ16 and 28âÂÂ30 September, and 20âÂÂ21 and 27âÂÂ28 October.
The AFC announced the calendar of the remaining matches on 9 July 2020, with all matches before the final played at centralised venues, and all knockout ties played as a single match. On 10 September 2020, the AFC announced the new dates for the East Region matches and the final.
Notes:
The original schedule of the competition, as planned before the pandemic, was as follows.
Note: Abderrazak Hamdallah finished ahead of Júnior Negrão to win the Top Scorer award despite scoring the same number of goals, and also having the same number of assists (first tiebreaker), since he played fewer minutes throughout the competition (second tiebreaker).
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The AFC took polls of fans in its website after the tournament.