The ‘Asian quota’ will be eliminated in the Korean professional soccer league, the K League, and a quota for foreign players will be added.
The Korea Professional Football League held its eighth board meeting on Thursday and deliberated and resolved issues such as changing the quota system for foreign players, the organization said on Friday.
According to the results of the board’s discussion, the Asian quota will be abolished from the 2025 season, and instead, one additional foreign player with no nationality will be allowed to register and play.
As a result, K League 1 will be able to register up to six foreign players per club, regardless of nationality, and send up to four of them to play.
In the K League 2, clubs can register four foreign players of any nationality and one ASEAN quota player, and all registered foreign players can play in matches.
“This decision reflects the recent trend of major Asian leagues abolishing Asian quotas,” the KFA explained.
Major Asian leagues such as Japan, China, Australia, and Qatar do not have Asian quotas, and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League will also abolish Asian quotas from the 2024-2025 season and allow unlimited foreign players to register and play.
However, given that many clubs currently have contracts with Asian quota players through 2024, the KFA’s board decided to implement the change from the 2025 season with a one-year grace period.
The board also decided to introduce a “homegrown” system.
Homegrown is a system to protect homegrown players and is practiced in England and the United States.
Scheduled to be implemented in 2025, the K League’s home-grown system will allow foreign youth players to be considered domestic players when registering as rookies if they have played for a domestic amateur team for a certain period of time.
Specifically, if a player has played for a domestic amateur team registered with the Korea Football Association for a total of five years or more, or three consecutive years, until the age of 18, and then signs with a K League club as his first professional team and registers as a rookie, he will be considered a domestic player and excluded from the foreign player quota.
Even after rookie registration, they will be recognized as domestic players when registering for the K League.
The KFA said it will grant one quota per club at the beginning of the implementation and will consider expanding it in the future.
The board also discussed a plan to relax the mandatory playing time system for U-22 players in the K League 1.
Currently, if a U-22 player does not start, two substitutions are allowed; if only one U-22 player starts and no additional substitutions are made, three substitutions are allowed; and if two or more U-22 players start or one starts and one or more substitutes are made, five substitutions are allowed.
Beginning in the 2024 season, three substitutions will be allowed if no U-22 players start, four substitutions will be allowed if one U-22 player starts and no additional substitutions are made, and four substitutions will be allowed if no U-22 player starts and two or more substitutions are made.
If two or more U-22 players start and one starts and one or more substitutes come on, five substitutions are allowed.
The federation explained that the change was made in light of the fact that the number of substitutes will increase from three to five in the 2021 season, and from 2024, the number of players on the bench will increase from seven to nine in the K League 1.
The current U-22 mandatory travel system will remain in place for K League 2.
In addition, the board also established a proviso that U-22 players who are suspended due to accumulation of warnings, ejection, or discipline will not be exempted from the U-22 mandatory attendance system if they are called up to the national team at any level.
A new rule has also been created to allow the match commissioner to make two 30-minute postponements of kickoffs, based on input from officials, when it is necessary to make a last-minute postponement decision due to inclement weather or facility issues. 토토사이트