The final draw was held on 12 December 2017, 11:00 TWT (UTC+8), at the Sherwood Taipei in Taipei.[6] The 16 teams were drawn into four groups of four teams.[7] The teams were seeded according to their performance in the 2016 AFC Futsal Championship final tournament and qualification, with the hosts Chinese Taipei automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.[8]
Each team must register a squad of 14 players, minimum two of whom must be goalkeepers (Regulations Articles 29.4 and 29.5).[9]
Match officials
The following referees were chosen for the 2018 AFC Futsal Championship.
Referees
Darius Turner
Hussain Ali Al-Bahhar
An Ran
Liu Jianqiao
Lee Po-fu
Mahmoudreza Nasirloo
Hasan Mousa Al-Gburi
Tomohiro Kozaki
Kim Jong-hee
Nurdin Bukuev
Mohamad Chami
Helday Idang
Rey Ritaga
Yuttakon Maiket
Azat Hajypolatov
Fahad Al-Hosani
Anatoliy Rubakov
Trương Quốc Dũng
Group stage
The top two teams of each group advance 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 11.5):[9]
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 Article 15.1).[9]
As per statistical convention in football, matches decided in extra time are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws.
