March 24, 2011

Azkals' AFC Challenge Cup cheatsheet

It's the final matchday of the qualifying stages of the AFC Challenge Cup! The Azkals, who everyone got to know via Showbiz Patrol, Chika Minute and Showbiz Aksyon rose to demigod status almost overnight and are now a breath away from rejoining the AFC Challenge Cup's final tournament (they last joined in the 2006 inaugural tourney).

The road is filled with potholes, the light at the end of the tunnel so far away, heck before I ran out of metaphors, see after the jump how the Azkals can advance to the final tournament.
Calculating the team standings in the game of football is not as straighforward, but not as hard, as it looks. First, you'd have to consider that each win is worth three points, a draw one point and a loss zero points. If a team is tied on points, usually the next basis is the goal difference, or the difference of the goals scored against from the goals scored by the team. WIth that in mind, let's see the current standings:


Team W L D GF GA GD
PLE 1 1 0 2 0 +2
BAN 1 0 1 2 2 0
PHI 0 2 0 1 1 0
MYA 0 1 1 1 3 -2


The matches tomorrow are Palestine vs. Myanmar and Philippines vs. Bangladesh. These matches are played at the same time (they'd use two venues). Before I reveal the cheatsheet, lemme say something important: The Azkals are in a must-win situation as all models show that the only way for the Azkals to progress is via a win against Bangladesh: Since Bangladesh is currently second place in the group and is ahead on points, a draw will not be enough, let alone will it be sufficient to overtake the current #1 team Palestine.

MYA/PLE
MYA WINS DRAW PLE WINS
BAN WINS BAN, PLE/MYA BAN, PLE PLE, BAN
BAN/PHI DRAW BAN/PLE/MYA PLE, BAN PLE, BAN
PHI WINS PHI, MYA/PLE PLE, PHI PLE, PHI


Note that since you probably won't care on who among Palestine and Myanmar advances I didn't provide the tiebreaking situations between the two teams.

Also, the Azkals can even win the group, if the Azkals wins with a 2-goal advantage, and the Palestine-Myanmar match ends in a goalless draw.

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