September 10: FIFA has announced that its own “owned and managed” ASEAN national team tournament will be played from September 15 to October 5 and will be held in Bandung and Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hong Kong, China.
The controversial tournament has become yet another example of unilateral decision-making by under-pressure FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is increasingly making decisions and promises without consulting members of his national federation or confederations.
In the case of the FIFA ASEAN Cup, the tournament was first announced in October 2025 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the 47th ASEAN Ministerial Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and witnessed by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
FIFA had not informed either the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) or the Kuala Lumpur-based Asian Football Confederation (AFC) of the planned tournament. The first thing ASEAN and AFC nations heard was through media stories.
That the announcement was accompanied by a memorandum of understanding indicates that Infantino had been working on the project in secret for some time without the courtesy of involving the national federations that would compete in this FIFA tournament, and without any discussion of their rights and remuneration for doing so.
Politically, Infantino’s modus operandi has been to divide and conquer FIFA members, veiled by his insistence on a role that is creating unity. In reality, it is creating the exact opposite along with a culture of fear, both within its members and within the FIFA staff.
An AFC insider told Insideworldfootball.com: “Why does FIFA organize competitions in regions when its mission is only to organize world cups and development. Why does it go into confederation regions and organize its own competitions. Was this something that was prepared so that the rights could be included in the FIFA Foward Enterpirse (FFE) package?”
The first of FIFA’s ASEAN tournaments will take place in the same year as the biennial AFF ASEAN Championship, which was won by Vietnam earlier this year.
The FIFA Council finally approved the ASEAN FIFA Cup in an online meeting in March and a memorandum of understanding between FIFA and the AFF was only reached in April.
The FIFA tournament will feature the 11 ASEAN federations plus three invited nations. The format will consist of two tier divisions.
Division 1: Hosted by Indonesia, will include Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the two guests Bangladesh and Pakistan.
