CAF Champions League due for an upgrade as familiar foes fight for African supremacy

African club football’s great showpiece, the Champions League final, rolls into Cairo this weekend with an air of distraction. Its finalists are obliged to glance back over their shoulders because, this time last year, the same Al Ahly and Wydad of Casablanca were contesting the same prize. As standard-bearers in the competition, they also look forward to a deluxe version of the competition, the proposed African Super League, a project long in the planning and seemingly close to actual launch.

Exactly what Africa’s Super League will look like is not yet clarified but a miniature, pilot form of it may take place this autumn. Wydad (WAC) will certainly be involved, as will Egypt’s Al Ahly, the most decorated of Africa’s clubs. Substantial financial backing from Saudi Arabia for the new tournament is on offer.

There is a consensus, at least in the wealthier corners of African football, that some sort of upgrade on the Champions League is overdue. It is entering its 60th year and showing some signs of weariness, even stagnation.

The pre-eminence of the clubs who meet on Sunday, and again in the second leg in Morocco a week later, is becoming routine. This final is not only a repeat of the last - won 2-0 over a single leg by WAC - but the third time in seven editions that Al Ahly versus WAC has been the deciding match. They met in the semi-final in 2020, when Al Ahly progressed to an all-Cairo showdown against Zamalek and collected the ninth of their 10 titles.

While that run speaks of Egyptian football’s resilience through what has been a hard decade - spectators were kept away from domestic football for five years following the 2012 Port Said stadium tragedy - it also points to a wider imbalance, the continent’s north ever