By Les Tan/Red Sports

Yogyakarta, Wednesday, December 14, 2011 — Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) sports ministers have accepted a Malaysian proposal to form an ASEAN football league, according to bernama.com.

The league is to feature leading football club teams from all ASEAN countries.

A meeting of ASEAN football league chief executive officers will be held on January 14th and 15th in Kuala Lumpur to discuss implementation.

Currently, the only professional ASEAN sports league is the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) which is heading into its third season in January 2012.

The Malaysian sports minister, Ahmad Shabery Cheek, believes there is economic potential in an ASEAN football league.

“Once football becomes a sport that can produce millionaires, it can become a much sought after career and parents can decide to send their children to professional football academies, just like in Europe and other developed countries,” bernama.com quoted him as saying.

Aside from the South-east Asian (SEA) Games and the ABL, the only other pan-ASEAN sports competition is the ASEAN Football Championship. The organisers, the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF), have managed to get sponsorship for the tournament since the first edition in 1996.

Suzuki Motor Corporation recently renewed its title sponsorship of the championship for 2012 in a deal that was sealed by World Sport Group, the exclusive marketing partner of the AFF.

The 2012 championship will be the third consecutive edition that will have Suzuki as the title sponsor. Previous editions were sponsored by Tiger Beer.

The Suzuki Cup is Southeast Asia’s biggest football event. A record 192 million television viewers in ASEAN markets watched the 2010 edition along with nearly 800,000 fans who attended the matches live.

“I am pleased that Suzuki has chosen to renew its partnership with the AFF to bring the biggest and most exciting sporting event to the region,” said HRH Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah, president of the AFF. “The 2010 edition was the most successful since the inauguration of the tournament and clearly managed to ignite the passions and imagination of the millions of football fans in Southeast Asia.”

Following the official draw scheduled to be held next year on July 11th, a qualifying round will be held in Myanmar from October 5th to 13th to determine the two teams which will join defending champions Malaysia and top seeds Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam in the final field of eight nations.

The 2012 AFF Suzuki Cup will be held from November 24th to December 22nd. Malaysia and Thailand will co-host the group stage matches. The semi-finals and final matches will be played on a home-and-away basis.