North Versus West for the Big Prize

On the evening of December 17, Africa will crown its club champions, boost their bank account by $225,000, and shower them with best wishes for next year's FIFA Club World Championship, where they are expected to scoop at least another $8m.

A jackpot of those dimensions will add even more than usual to the competitive edge when battle is joined in Tunis on Saturday for the first leg of the CAF Champions' League final between Esp?rance of Tunis and Accra Hearts of Oak.


The protagonists are two of the continent's oldest and most distinguished clubs, who squeezed out six other candidates in a sometimes knife-edged group stage. Hearts got there easily, winning four of their six games - two away from home - and still finding time to wrap up the Ghanaian league title several weeks before the season's end.


Esp?rance also soared over their domestic league, winning a third successive title - and they're on top again now, ten games into the new season. But a slow start to the year meant they found the continental going harder, fighting back after two home defeats to edge out South Africa's Mamelodi Sundowns on goal difference.


It is perhaps significant that the first CAF Champions' League final of the new millennium pits clubs from the two regions with Africa's strongest football traditions. West Africa may have the proudest record in terms of national teams, but it is the north that has dominated the continent's most prestigious club competition. Teams from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have won 14 of the last 16 finals, with only Orlando Pirates of South Africa and Asec Mimosas of Cote d'Ivoire breaking the pattern.


Both Hearts and Esp?rance have been there before. The Tunis giants won the Champions' Cup, as it was then, in 1994, and are the only team ever to have taken all three pan-African club competitions. They were losing finalists last year, victims of over-confidence after a 0-0 draw with Raja Casablanca in the first leg sent them on premature celebrations. Hosting the return leg, they were stunned 4-3 on penalties after a fresh stalemate in the El-Menzah stadium.

That debacle, which cost them a place in the inaugural FIFA world championship, has been burned into Tunisian football consciousness. Nobody at Esp?rance will make the mistake again of skinning the leopard before killing it. But in Hearts of Oak, they face opponents who have not lost a match away from home in this year's competition, and who are desperately looking forward to ending a jinx that saw them lose the Champions' Cup twice, in 1977 and 1979, to Cameroon's Union Douala and Hafia of Guinea respectively.


With so much at stake, Saturday's game is bound to be hard fought. Esp?rance know they must win, and handsomely, to have a chance of surviving the return leg in Accra. The Ghanaians, who have one of the continent's most exciting young attacking talents in Ishmael Addo, will defend to the last man while looking to hit on the counter-attack.


Only the foolhardy or the brave would bet on the outcome.


CAF Champions' League hall of fame (Champions' Cup until 1996)
1965: Oryx Douala (Cameroon)
1966: Stade d'Abidjan (Cote d'Ivoire)
1967-68: TP Englebert Lumumbashi (Zaire)
1969: Ismaili (Egypt)
1970: Asante Kotoko (Ghana)
1971: Canon Yaound? (Cameroon)
1972: Hafia (Guinea)
1973: Vita Club(Zaire)
1974: Club Athl?tique Renaissance Aiglons Brazzaville (Congo)
1975: Hafia (Guinea)
1976: Mouloudia d'Alger (Algeria)
1977: Hafia (Guinea)
1978: Canon de Yaound? (Cameroon)
1979: Union Douala (Cameroon)
1980: Canon Yaound? (Cameroon)
1981: Jeunesse Electronique Tizi Ouzou (Algeria)
1982: Al Ahly (Egypt)
1983: Asante Kotoko (Ghana)
1984: Zamalek (Egypt)
1985: Forces Arm?es Royales (Morocco)
1986: Zamalek (Egypt)
1987: Al Ahly (Egypt)
1988: Wifak de S?tif (Algeria)
1989: Raja Casablanca (Morocco) 1990: Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (Algeria) 1991: Club Africain (Tunisia)
1992: Wydad Casablanca (Morocco)
1993: Zamalek (Egypt)
1994: Esp?rance (Tunisia)
1995: Orlando Pirates (South Africa)
1996: Zamalek (Egypt)
1997: Raja Casablanca (Morocco)
1998: Asec (Cote d'Ivoire)
1999: Raja Casablanca (Morocco)