This year’s edition of the African Men’s Clubs Championship is already into the end of its group stage and it seems that the dominance of the clubs from North Africa will continue for at least another year.
Teams from only three countries have won a gold medal in all of the Championship’s 33 editions and all three of those are North African ones. Egypt and Tunisia have both got 15 gold and 10 silver medals, while Algeria has 3 gold and 7 silver medals. Al Ahly (Egypt), 10-time winners, is the club with most trophies, followed by the 6-time champions Sfaxien from Tunisia and another Egyptian team – Zamalek, with 5 golds.
Can this year’s competition then, which is held in Sousse (Tunisia) for a second time in a row, be different? Well, judging by the first results, it is highly unlikely that this would be the case. On the contrary, we can be witnesses to a total domination of the North African sides – currently, all teams in a position to qualify for the quarter-finals are from that region.
From the four pools of six teams, only the top 2 advance to the knock-out stages and at the moment the top of each group looks like this:
Pool A: Sahel (Tunisia), Ittihad Tangier (Morocco)
Pool B: Zamalek (Egypt), Esperance (Tunisia)
Pool C: Al Ahly (Egypt), Bourj Bouaririj (Algeria)
Pool D: Somoha (Egypt), Setif (Algeria)
Most of the teams above have a perfect record of 3 wins and 0 losses, while the only other teams close to challenging them for the top spots, such as Ahly Beni Ghazi (Libya) and FAR (Morocco) are again from North Africa.
Apart from the North African quintuplet (Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia; each of which has entered 2 or even 3 clubs), only 10 other countries have sent representative teams to the Championship. These are Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, DR Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. However, most of these clubs are there just to fill in the pools and to instil legitimacy to the claim that it is a ‘Pan’-African Clubs Championship, and not a ‘North’-African one. And whereas in the past, teams from Kenya and Cameroon sometimes managed to steal a medal (whether it be a silver or a bronze one), this year it seems that the knock-out stage will be all about North Africa.
Photo Source: redpepper.co.ug