Mamelodi Sundowns have joined a surprisingly long list of defending champions who have proven unable to qualify for the next group phase of the African Champions League competition.
Early elimination for last season’s winners came after their failure to beat Wiliete of Angola in their second-round tie, held 1-1 at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Friday and crashing out on the away goals rule.
The shock setback for Sundowns comes at the hands of a club competing in the Champions League for the first time, but it is the 10th time that the holders have crashed out before the group phase.
Since the launch of the Champions League in 1997, there have been failures for Raja Casablanca (2000), Hearts of Oak (2001), Al Ahly (2002, 2009, 2014), Zamalek (2023), Etoile Sahel (2008), TP Mazembe (2011, 2016) and now Sundowns.
Ghana’s Hearts of Oak were knocked out in the first round in defence of their title by Etoile du Congo, losing 6-4 on aggregate after a 5-1 thumping in the return match.
The rest of the clubs, like Sundowns, all went out in the round before the group, except TP Mazembe, who were disqualified in 2011 for using an ineligible player.
In the era before the group competition was introduced, when the competition was known as the African Champions Cup and played on a two-legged knockout basis, there were three notable shock early eliminations of the defending champions.
In 1982 Algeria’s JS Kabylie lost on penalties to Al Hilal of Sudan in the first round, while two years later the Angolan club Primeiro Maio, who like Wiliete were also from Benguela, pulled off a massive shock with a 3–2 aggregate triumph over Ghanaian giants Asante Kotoko.
Arguably the biggest upset in the competition’s history came in 1989 when holders Entente Sétif of Algeria were dumped out in the first round of the old-style Champions Cup by Mighty Blackpool of Sierra Leone 5-3 on penalties after a 1-1 aggregate draw.