The 2024 AFC Cup final was the final match of the

2023–24 AFC Cup The 2023–24 AFC Cup was the 20th edition of the AFC Cup, Asia's secondary club football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and the final edition under the AFC Cup title, as the competition was revamped under the nam ...

, the 19th edition of the

AFC Cup The AFC Champions League Two (abbreviated as the ACL Two or ACL2) is an annual continental club football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation. It is the second-tier competition of Asian club football, ranked below the AFC C ...

, Asia's secondary club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

tournament organized by the

Asian Football Confederation The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in most countries and territories in Asia. The AFC was formed in 1954. It has 47 members. The Asian Ladies Football Confederation ( ...

(AFC), and the final edition under the AFC Cup title, as the competition was revamped under the name ''AFC Champions League Two'' starting in 2024–25. The final was contested as a single match between

Al-Ahed Al Ahed Football Club () is a football club based in Ouzai, a district in Beirut, Lebanon, that competes in the Lebanese Premier League, the top flight of Lebanese football. The club was founded in 1964 as Al Ahed Al Jadeed, initially startin ...

from

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

and

Central Coast Mariners Central Coast Mariners Football Club is an Australian professional soccer club based in Gosford, on the Central Coast of New South Wales. It competes in the A-League Men, under licence from the Australian Professional Leagues (APL). The Mar ...

from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. The match was played at the

Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex The Sultan Qaboos Stadium at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex (), also known locally as Boshar (), is a government-owned multi-purpose stadium in the Boshar district of Muscat, Oman. It is currently used mostly for football matches. It has faci ...

Muscat Muscat (, ) is the capital and most populous city in Oman. It is the seat of the Governorate of Muscat. According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the population of the Muscat Governorate in 2022 was 1.72 million. ...

on 5 May 2024. Central Coast Mariners won the final 1–0 to crown their maiden title and become the first Australian club to win the competition. By also winning the competition, Australia became the first and only nation in the AFC to have had clubs winning both the

AFC Champions League The AFC Champions League Elite (abbreviated as the ACL Elite) is an annual continental club association football, football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation, and contested by Asia's List of top-division football clubs i ...

and

, after

Western Sydney Wanderers Western Sydney Wanderers Football Club (colloquially known as Western Sydney, Wanderers, or simply as WSW) is an Australian professional association football club based in the Western Sydney region of Sydney, New South Wales. It competes in t ...

' win of the

2014 AFC Champions League The 2014 AFC Champions League was the 33rd edition of the top-level Asian club football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and the 12th under the current AFC Champions League title. Guangzhou Evergrande were the d ...

. It was also the third, and final time, that a club from outside West Asia had won the competition.

Background

This was the first meeting between

and

. For Central Coast Mariners, this was their first AFC Cup final appearance in the club's history under the appointment of

Mark Jackson Mark A. Jackson (born April 1, 1965) is an American former professional basketball player who was a point guard in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the St. John's Red Storm and was selected by the New ...

. The Mariners were competing to win their first continental trophy and complete a treble with the league premiership and the

finals series Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final examination or finals, a test given at the end of a course of study or training *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which d ...

in hand after the final. At the time, no Australian clubs have secured three trophies in a season or an

title. In contrast, this was Al-Ahed's second AFC Cup final appearance, having won 1–0 in

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

against

April 25 Events Pre-1600 * 404 BC – Admiral Lysander and King Pausanias of Sparta blockade Athens and bring the Peloponnesian War to a successful conclusion. * 775 – The Battle of Bagrevand puts an end to an Armenian rebellion against th ...

at Kuala Lumpur Stadium, the first continental title for the club and Lebanese football. The final was due to be the last edition of the AFC Cup before the reformat to the

AFC Champions League Two The AFC Champions League Two (abbreviated as the ACL Two or ACL2) is an annual continental club football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation. It is the second-tier competition of Asian club football, ranked below the AFC Ch ...

the next season.

Venue

The match was originally scheduled to be hosted by Al-Ahed at the

Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium (CCSC) () is a multi-purpose stadium with a capacity of 49,500 seats, located in the Bir Hassan area of Beirut, Lebanon. The stadium, equipped with sport of athletics, athletics facilities, is the largest in th ...

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

. However, due to the ongoing

Lebanese liquidity crisis The Lebanese liquidity crisis is an ongoing financial crisis affecting Lebanon, that became fully apparent in August 2019, and was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in Lebanon (which began in February 2020), the 2020 Beirut port ex ...

, combined with concerns of the

Gaza war The Gaza war is an armed conflict in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel fought since 7 October 2023. A part of the unresolved Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflict, Gaza–Israel conflicts dating ...

, the match was instead played on a neutral ground at the

, Oman as the home stadium of the Lebanese side.

Road to the final

''Note: In all results below, the score of the finalist is given first (H: home; A: away).''

Format

The final was played as a single match, with the host team (winners of the West Asia Zonal final) alternated from the previous season's final. If the game would be tied after regulation time, the winning team would be decided by

extra time Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is required t ...

and, if necessary, a

penalty shoot-out The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

Match

Details

Statistics

References

External links

*, the-AFC.com
AFC Cup 2024
stats.the-AFC.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Afc Cup Final 2024 AFC Champions League Two finals *Final May 2024 sports events in Asia International club association football competitions hosted by Oman Al Ahed FC matches Central Coast Mariners FC matches