The 2024/25 season will see your Central Coast Mariners return to the Group Stage of Asia’s Elite club competition for the first time in a decade.
After finishing the 2023/24 Isuzu UTE A-League season at the top of the ladder, we booked our ticket to the newly re-named AFC Champions League Elite. The top 24 teams from all across Asia will compete for the title of Asia’s Best Club team, and in the process aim to secure qualification to the FIFA Club World Cup.
One key change from the old Champions League format involves the Group Stages. Instead of Groups of four battling to progress, every team in our Eastern region who has qualified will be in one large group.
We will face eight of those teams, four at home and four away, to make up our points tally for the league stage.
The top eight teams on points after those eight games will progress past the League stage and into the Round of 16, before the quarterfinals and beyond will take place during a two week-long knockout stage in Saudi-Arabia.
The official draw ceremony will take place on August 16th, with further details on the draw mechanics to be announced in due course.
Our group will include teams from Japan, Korea Republic, China, Thailand and Malaysia, with eleven of the twelve teams in our Eastern League confirmed. See below the teams that have qualified, with China’s Shandong Taishan and Thailand’s Bangkok FC set to fight it out for the final place.
East
| Rank | Member Association | Club | |
| Direct | Indirect | ||
| 1 | Japan | Vissel Kobe | – |
| Kawasaki Frontale | – | ||
| Yokohama F. Marinos | – | ||
| 2 | Korea Republic | Ulsan HD FC | Gwangju FC* |
| FC Pohang Steelers | |||
| 3 | China PR | Shanghai Port FC | Shandong Taishan FC |
| Shanghai Shenhua FC | |||
| 4 | Thailand | Buriram United | Bangkok United |
| 5 | Australia | Central Coast Mariners | – |
| 6 | Malaysia | Johor Darul Ta’zim FC | – |
*Gwangju will qualify directly for the League Stage
