Champions League Group Stage Draw

By: Houssem | May 7th, 2009

Today the gentlemen in Cairo proceeded to both african inter-club competition draws : the CAF Confederation Cup – with fellow tunisians and title holders Club Sfaxien – and the CAF Champions League, with only one North African team left in the race : Étoile du Sahel ! We are once again Tunisia’s only hope of getting this title and joining the likes of Manchester United and FC Barcelona in the Club World Cup.Here’s what Lady Fortune has blessed us with :

Group B

Étoile du Sahel (TUN)

TP Mazembé (RDC)

Heartland (NIG)

Monomotapa (ZIM)

Group A therefore consists of :

El Merreikh (SUD)
El Hilal (SUD)
Zesco United (ZAM)
Kano Pillars (NIG)

This surely could have been worse. In addition, topping Group B would allow us to play the return leg of the semi-final (and the final, if we make it) at home. Just brilliant isn’t it ? With the other big names – Al Ahly, ASEC Mimosas, Coton Sport – out of the picture, one might think that this is probably the easiest Champions League we’ve had to play, but we have to show some prudence and respect towards the opponents, who will be relying on the element of surprise. Chokri Lamiri, head of the football section at Étoile du Sahel, in an interview with cafonline.com :

“Sincerely, I am really satisfied with our group. In Sousse, we were praying to avoid the Sudanese teams and our wishes came true. After a brief difficult period the club seems to have redeemed itself. Before now and the start of the next phase, there will be sometime for holidays and people can return to work harder. I hope that the Ramadan which is coming too soon will not have any negative effect on our players especially with teams like T. P Mazembe in our group. We also have teams like Monomotapa which eliminated ASEC and Heartland which booted out Coton Sport. Teams must now be judged by their results.”

And here’s what TP Mazembe’s technical director Aboubacar Ouattara had to say :

“We have to expect an open and intense contest in the group. Etoile Sahel is one of the pillars of African football for the past decade and the two other teams relatively unknown have proved their worth. You don’t get to this stage of the competition by chance. There must be some quality in the team which is what we have been able to do. But experience has shown that we need to be humble as we need to go as far as possible, like our other opponents will want to. It will be great to win the trophy in the same year that we won the CHAN.”

This group stage will stretch between mid-july and mid-september, which should leave the team enough time to rest after the final game of the season, get on with the preparation, and eventually adjust to a new coach. Word has it that Gernot Rohr will be leaving after the EST game, and that his replacement will be US Monastir’s current coach, Lotfi Rhim, who led the Blues to the first cup final in their history.

Our first step will be away to Monomotapa in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, a team we know absolutely nothing about, except that they managed to kick out ASEC Mimosas, and won the Zimbabwe Premier League for the first time in 2008.

How do you think we will do in this Group ?(answers)