The women's football tournament at the 2018 Asian Games was held from 16 to 31 August in Palembang, Indonesia.[1]North Korea were the defending champions, but were eliminated in the quarter-finals. The host team was eliminated in the group stage.
The draw for the tournament was held on 5 July 2018.[3] The teams were seeded into four pots based on their performances in the previous Asian Games in 2014. The hosts Indonesia were automatically assigned into position A1.
Teams in a group were 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 were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings.[1]
Highest number of points obtained in all group matches;
Highest number of points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned;
Goal difference resulting from the group matches between the teams concerned;
Highest number of goals scored from all group matches between the teams concerned;
If two or more teams have equal ranking with the criteria so far, reapply the criteria above only for them. If this re-application gives no more ranking, apply the following criteria.
Highest number of goals scored in all group matches;
Kicks from the penalty mark only if two (2) teams are involved and they are both on the field of play.
Fewer points of yellow/red cards in all group matches (only one of these deductions shall be applied to a player in a single match):
First yellow card: 1 point;
Indirect red card (second yellow card): 3 points;
Direct red card: 3 points;
Yellow card followed by direct red card: 4 points;
Drawing of lots
Third-placed teams from the three groups are ranked according to the following criteria, after the results against the fourth-placed teams of groups A and B are excluded in order to rank them with the same numbers of matches.[1]
Highest number of points obtained in all group matches;
In order to ensure equality when comparing the third-placed teams of all groups, the results of the matches against the 4th-placed teams in Group A and Group B were ignored due to Group C having only three teams.
Source: Asian Games 2018Archived 26 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) goal difference; 3) goals scored; 4) fair play points; 5) drawing of lots.
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. Note: In order to ensure equality, for teams in four-team groups, their match against the fourth-placed teams are excluded when considering the ranking.
