The 1956 AFC Asian Cup was the inaugural AFC Asian Cup, a quadrennial continental association football competition introduced and organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The final tournament was held in Hong Kong from 1 September to 15 September 1956 as a four-team round-robin competition with no final. It was won by South Korea.

An unusual ruling meant that all games were 80 minutes long rather than 90, with an extra 30 minutes extra time if the game was drawn at full time (although this didn’t happen due to bad light).

Venues

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|-

!rowspan=4|

! Hong Kong

|-

| Government Stadium

|-

| Capacity: 28,000

|-

| 200px

|}

Qualification

thumb|300px|

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:left;"

|-

! Team

! Qualified as

! Qualified on

! Previous appearance

|-

| || || || 0 (debut)

|-

| || Central Zone winners || 24 May 1956 || 0 (debut)

|-

| || Eastern Zone winners|| 2 September 1956 || 0 (debut)

|-

| || Western Zone winners (Automatically qualified since other nations withdrew) || 1956 || 0 (debut)

|}

Squads

Results

All times are Hong Kong Time (UTC+8)

<onlyinclude></onlyinclude>

----

----

----

----

----

Winners

Goalscorers

With four goals, Nahum Stelmach is the top scorer in the tournament. In total, 27 goals were scored by 15 different players, with none of them credited as own goal.

4 goals

  • Nahum Stelmach

3 goals

  • Sung Nak-woon
  • Woo Sang-kwon

2 goals

  • Yehoshua Glazer
  • Choi Chung-min
  • Trần Văn Nhung

1 goal

  • Kim Ji-sung
  • Nguyễn Văn Cụt

References

  • Jovanovic, Bojan; Panahi, Majeed; Veroeveren, Pieter. "Asian Nations Cup 1956". RSSSF.