Who wins bragging right as first team in Africa to take home the glittering brand-new CAF Champions League Trophy?

By Ed Emeanua

Beginning from today, ready or not, you can’t’ hide, Africa must find and crown the first winners of the glittering, brand-new CAF, TotalEnergies champions league trophy.

When the dust of this footballing reverie that is slated to stretch over a day more than a week settles, the finalists-Mamelodi Sundowns and Pyramids-are set for a historic reality check as the 2024-2025 joust for the Africa champions league competition comes to an epic climax.

The CAF Champions League final will be played over two legs. The first is billed for the Loftus Versfeld Stadium in South Africa on Saturday, May 24, 2025, while the second leg comes up on June 1, 2025, at the 30 June Stadium in Cairo.

At stake is more than just who wins the battle and as such, some image lifting bragging rights. The stakes cannot be higher coming at the eve of CAF and TotalEnergies’ decision to introduce the allure of one of the teams being called the winner of the new trophy added to the bargain.

These two befitting remnants of gladiators in the continent’s prime and most glamorous club championship must now focus on settling their sporting contentions first in South Africa, then in Egypt. Fame will surely search out whom to bestow upon this historic favor of being called the winner of the freshly minted trophy. When all is said and done today at Mamelodi Sundowns’ Loftus Versfeld Stadium where the South African club hosts the first leg in Johannesburg, the picture of who’s favored and who is not could begin to emerge.

Mamelodi Sundowns’ Brazilian attacking midfielder, Lucas Ribeiro, is very capable of turning heads. He equally has the enviable ability for redirecting historic favors to his Bafana baStyle enclave. So too can Congolese Fiston Mayele of Pyramids potentially turn around the hands of time and forge out a winner from the hitherto unenviable also-ran casting of Egypt’s modest ‘The Heirs of Pharaohs’ club side in today’s CAF Champions League final first leg billed for Pretoria.

The 26-year-old Brazilian has now found the net the total of 16 times in today’s South Africa highly competitive Premier League setup, even striking the mark twice last weekend alone to end his long-suffering mid-season goal scoring meltdown. The South American has also helped Sundowns to a record-stretching eighth unbroken South African league championships on the trot. In so doing, the Brazilian has successfully positioned himself as clear favorite for the Premier Soccer League’s Golden Boot winner.

Mayele, 30, has already shown he’s got a back fortified with a tough-as-nail hard bark in the manner he broke South Africans’ hearts in the Pyramid’s semi-final’s destruction of Orlando Pirates. Having stalemated the first leg against Pirates 0-0 in Johannesburg during the first leg, ‘The Heirs of Pharaohs’ then marched on to the finals by winning the reverse fixture 3-2 in New Cairo, Cairo, Egypt.

But it was the visitors who shot into the lead twice in Egypt during the second leg, including scoring their second goal with just six minutes left on the clock. It took only the special talents of the Pyramids’ Congolese resources to bail out the cat from the dungeons after latching onto a loose ball inside the box from a well delivered corner kick to score the winner.