Eliminated by COVID-19, defending champions Al-Hilal Riyadh withdrew from the AFC Champions League due to a lack of healthy players
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According to Zhou Dao Shanghai, the Saudi powerhouse Al-Hilal, which had already secured a spot in the next round, had only 11 players available for the final group match due to many of its players contracting COVID-19; as a result, FIFA considered them to have withdrawn from the competition, ending the defending champions’ campaign in the AFC Champions League for this season.
In the first five rounds of group stage matches, Al-Hilal Riyadh secured 3 wins and 2 draws, accumulating 11 points and qualifying ahead of schedule. However, 18 players in the team have been tested positive for COVID-19; as a result, for the final match of the group stage, Al-Hilal Riyadh had only 11 players on the roster, which is not enough to meet the minimum requirement of 13 players per match for AFC competitions. Therefore, according to the AFC Champions League rules, Riyadh Crescent, as the defending champion, is considered to have withdrawn from the competition. Following Al-Riyadh New Moon’s withdrawal, Uzbekistan’s Pakhtakor Tashkent and the UAE’s Al-Nassr Dubai, who were in the same group, secured a place in the next round as the top two teams.
A clash between China and South Korea is indeed possible; South Korea has done an excellent job of controlling the pandemic, and it even managed to dismantle a cult organization in the process