The 2021 OFC Champions League was originally to be the 20th edition of the Oceanian Club Championship,

Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...

's premier club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

tournament organized by the

Oceania Football Confederation The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) is one of the six continental confederations of international association football. The OFC has 13 members, 11 of which are full members and two which are associate members not affiliated with FIFA. It ...

(OFC), and the 15th season under the current OFC Champions League name. The tournament, which would usually be played in the first half of the year, were originally postponed to start no earlier than 1 July due to border closures throughout the Pacific caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. On 4 June 2021, the OFC announced that the tournament had been cancelled, and no champions would be awarded for the second season in a row. The OFC representative at the

2021 FIFA Club World Cup The 2021 FIFA Club World Cup (officially known as the FIFA Club World Cup UAE 2021 presented by Alibaba Cloud for sponsorship reasons) was the 18th edition of the FIFA Club World Cup, a FIFA-organised international club football tournament betwe ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, which would originally be the winners of the 2021 OFC Champions League, was confirmed to be

Auckland City Auckland City was a territorial authority with city status covering the central isthmus of the urban area of Auckland, New Zealand. It was governed by the Auckland City Council from 1989 to 2010, and as a territory within the wider Auckland R ...

on 3 August 2021 following a decision by the OFC Executive Committee, based on sporting merit principles which took into consideration the final placing of every member association's national league champion and runner-up in each OFC Champions League between 2016 and 2020, with the results combined to determine an overall ranking, and applied to the clubs nominated by their member association as the champion or runner-up from their respective national leagues to qualify for the 2021 OFC Champions League. However, on 31 December 2021,

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

announced that Auckland City had withdrawn from the competition due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related quarantine measures required by the New Zealand authorities. As a result,

AS Pirae Association Sportive Pirae is a football club from Pirae in Tahiti. They are one of the most successful teams in Tahiti having won the Tahiti Division Fédérale nine times. They are also the first French Polynesian team to have reached the fi ...

were nominated as the OFC's representative in their place.

Hienghène Sport Hienghène Sport (), known in Fwâi language as Hyehen Sport is a New Caledonian football team from Hienghène playing in the New Caledonia Super Ligue, New Caledonia. History The club was founded in Hienghène, North Province in 1997 and ...

, having won the title in

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

, were the title holders, since the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the

and the title was not awarded. However, they failed to qualify for the tournament.

Teams

A total of 18 teams from all 11 OFC member associations were eligible to enter the competition. *The seven developed associations (Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Vanuatu) would be awarded two berths each in the group stage. *The four developing associations (American Samoa, Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga) would be awarded one berth each in the qualifying stage, with the winners and runners-up advancing to the group stage. ;Notes

Schedule

The tournament would originally be played between January and May 2021, with the qualifying stage scheduled to be played in

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono Island, Manono an ...

in January, and the group stage starting in February. However, the OFC announced on 5 November 2020 that the tournament would begin no earlier than 1 July due to the

. On 4 March 2021, the OFC announced that the tournament would be played before 31 October 2021, and one option was to hold a single, centralised tournament in

Fiji Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists ...

in October. However, the tournament was eventually cancelled after a number of options were explored due to border closures throughout the Pacific. The original schedule of the competition, as planned before the pandemic, was as follows.

References

External links

OFC Champions League 2021
oceaniafootball.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Ofc Champions League 2021

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

1 Association football events cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic