Of the 47 AFC member associations, a total of 16 associations teams entered the competition, each entering one team. There was no qualification, and all entrants advanced to the final tournament.[3]
Fifteen of the sixteen associations which participated in the 2018 AFC Futsal Club Championship returned for 2019, with Kuwait entering a representative for the first time since 2015, and replacing the Australian representatives.[4]
The draw was held on 27 June 2019, 15:30 MYT (UTC+8), at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.[5] The teams were seeded according to their association's performance in the 2018 AFC Futsal Club Championship, with the team from hosts Thailand automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.[6]
Each team had to register a squad of 14 players, minimum two of whom must have been goalkeepers (Regulations Articles 30.1 and 30.2).[7]
Group stage
The top two teams of each group advanced to the quarter-finals.
Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 10.5):[7]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they met in the last round of the group;
Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
In the knockout stage, extra time and penalty shoot-out are used to decide the winner if necessary, except for the third place match where penalty shoot-out (no extra time) is used to decide the winner if necessary (Regulations Articles 14.1 and 15.1).[7]
