Mumbai, Jan 24 (IANS): AFter India's inability to put up a team for the match against Chinese Taipei and subsequent withdrawal from the Women's Asian Cup 2022, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has clarified that matches involving three of the four teams in other groups will be considered for deciding the quarter-final spots.

India could not put up the minimum required 13 players for the match against Chinese Taipei at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Sunday as the 23-member squad was devastated by Covid-19 and injuries.

On Saturday, India had 13 players for the Group A match against Chinese Taipei the next day but two of them were injured -- one with a fractured wrist -- while two others were showing symptoms of fever and coughing.

On Sunday morning, those two players returned Covid-19 positive results, thus reducing the number of players available to only nine. The rules specify that a team has to name 13 players to participate in a match and thus India had to withdraw from the event.

The AFC has now clarified that as all matches of India are cancelled and considered null and void, for the avoidance of doubt, all points and goals in those matches shall not be taken into consideration when determining the final rankings in the group.

"Additionally, based on Article 7.4 of the Competition Regulations, the calculation of the best third-placed Participating Teams among all groups shall be determined by the method set out in Appendix 2 of the AFC Competition Operations Manual.

"In this regard, only three teams - China PR, Chinese Taipei and the Islamic Republic of Iran - will now be participating in Group A of the Competition," the AFC clarified in a statement on Monday.

"To avoid any possible disparity in the final comparison between all third-placed teams, the results of the matches in Group B and C between the first, second and third-placed teams against the fourth-placed teams will not be counted," the statement said.