The League That Never Was: Inside the Long Death of Africa's Super League

FOOTBIZ · AFRICAN FOOTBALL

6 August 2026  ·  Owuraku Ampofo

On 2 July 2026, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) published its match calendar for the 2026/27 inter-club season. Preliminary round first legs, 4-6 September. Second preliminary round, 16-25 October. Group stage from 27 November through late January. Finals somewhere between 9 and 31 May 2027.Two competitions appear in that document: the CAF Champions League and the CAF Confederation Cup. There is no third.

Three months earlier, CAF president Patrice Motsepe had told reporters that the African Football League, which was sold as the single most transformative idea in the history of African club football, would return before the end of 2026. When the calendar landed, there was no window for it. No draw date. No club list. No format.

 

The Promise

The idea did not come from Africa. On 28 November 2019, Infantino was in Lubumbashi for TP Mazembe's 80th anniversary. The FIFA president used the occasion to float a proposal suggesting they take the twenty best clubs on the continent and put them in a league of their own. He attached numbers to it immediately. The competition would generate $100 million, he said, which would place it among the ten richest leagues in the world. He also announced an appeal to raise $1 billion so that every African country could have a stadium built to FIFA specification.

Gianni Infantino at a 2017 press conference. The FIFA president publicly floated the African league concept in Lubumbashi two years later.

Photo: Doha Stadium Plus Qatar · CC BY 2.0

It was, even by the standards of football administration, an extraordinary set of claims to make in a single afternoon.CAF and FIFA formalised the plan in February 2020. In July 2021, Motsepe, just four months into his CAF presidency, confirmed the project would proceed under CAF's umbrella. By February 2022 he was describing it as FIFA-run and privately funded, which was a revealing formulation. Essentially, the continental body would own the competition, but somebody else would pay for it.

The official launch came on 10 August 2022, at CAF's 44th General Assembly in Arusha, Tanzania. The numbers announced there remain the benchmark against which everything since has to be measured.

Clubs would also have to meet licensing criteria by having a youth academy and a women's side.

TP Mazembe's women celebrate winning the 2024 CAF Women's Champions League. The original AFL licensing model required every participating club to maintain a women's side.

Photo: Reda Benkhadra · CC BY-SA 4.0

What Motsepe could not say, in Arusha or afterwards, was where the money would come from. CAF was not in a position to fund it. The organisation had lost a $1 billion television and marketing rights deal with Lagardère Sports in 2019, and at the very general assembly where the Super League was launched, CAF reported a loss of close to $50 million for the previous year. The governing body announcing the richest club competition in African history was, at that moment, one of the poorest confederations in world football.

The scepticism was immediate and it was specific. African club football's difficulties were infrastructural and logistical, and a new competition would not resolve weak stadiums or the cost of flying squads and supporters across a continent with poor internal air connectivity.

There was a further awkwardness. Infantino had spent 2021 denouncing the European Super League as a betrayal of football's open pyramid. The African version was invitation-only, selected on rankings rather than domestic qualification, and had his fingerprints all over it. CAF was accused of serving as a laboratory for an idea that would not have survived scrutiny in Europe.

 

The Shrinking

Between the launch and the kick-off, the competition lost almost everything that made it distinctive.First the name. On 9 June 2023, in an interview with beIN Sports, Motsepe announced that the Africa Super League would henceforth be the African Football League. His explanation was disarmingly candid as he said colleagues in Europe had advised against the Super League branding because of what had happened there.

Four days later, at the CAF General Assembly in Abidjan, Infantino confirmed the rest of the retreat. The inaugural edition would not have 24 clubs. It would have eight. It would not run from August to May. It would run for three weeks. It would not be a league at all. In fact it would be a straight two-legged knockout, quarter-finals to final, and 14 matches in total. The expanded version was promised for "further down the line."

Then the prize money was published, on 30 September 2023, and the gap between promise and delivery became impossible to hide. In over one year, the prize money had shrunk from $11.5 million to $4 million. There were no upfront payments per club and no annual payment per member association was received.CAF's own framing of the shrunken pot was that the winners would earn $4 million from just six matches, which was true and also an admission that the tournament had become a short, lucrative exhibition rather than a league.

Wydad and Al Ahly in CAF Champions League action in 2011. Both clubs later appeared in the AFL's only edition.

Photo: Mustapha Ennaimi · CC BY 2.0

 

The Saudi Money

The gap had to be filled from somewhere, and for a period in 2023 it looked like it would be filled from Riyadh. In May 2023, the Guardian reported that Saudi Arabia was in talks with CAF over a sponsorship worth around $200 million, double the prize pot Motsepe had promised in Arusha. The report came a week after CAF and the Saudi Arabian Football Federation signed a five-year memorandum of understanding on football development. The reading in the trade press was straightforward with the Kingdom potentially building continental goodwill ahead of a World Cup bid, and 54 CAF votes were worth buying.

The timeline reported then is worth remembering now. The full 24-club competition was to be delayed to the 2024/25 season, which was when the Saudi money was expected to begin flowing. The eight-team version in late 2023 was a placeholder and a proof of concept to keep the project alive while the real deal was signed. Unfortunately, the real deal was never signed.What arrived instead, on 12 October 2023, just eight days before kick-off, was Visit Saudi, the Kingdom's tourism authority, as main sponsor of the inaugural edition. It was a one-season agreement.

CAF's announcement stressed that both parties were open to extending it to future editions, which is the language you use when nothing longer has been agreed. Visit Saudi signed with the Asian Football Confederation the same week, covering a run of AFC national-team competitions, and had already become a global partner of LaLiga in August. Africa got a single-edition tourism-board deal for a tournament that would not be staged again.

The Saudi thread did not disappear entirely. In September 2024, speaking to Egypt's MBC Masr 2, Motsepe said CAF was working with Turki Al-Sheikh and the Riyadh Season project, and that announcements would follow. In the same breath he identified the key problem as financing.

Patrice Motsepe speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2009. As CAF president, he became the AFL's most persistent public advocate.

Photo: World Economic Forum / Monika Flueckiger · CC BY-SA 2.0

 

The One Edition

For all that, the 2023 tournament was not a failure on the pitch. It opened on 20 October in Dar es Salaam, Simba SC against Al-Ahly, and ran to 12 November. Eight clubs namely Al-Ahly, Wydad AC, Espérance de Tunis, Mamelodi Sundowns, TP Mazembe, Simba SC, Petro de Luanda and Enyimba. 14 matches, 24 goals, and a total attendance of 547,000.

TP Mazembe supporters at the 2024 CAF Women's Champions League final—one of the club communities the continental competition was meant to connect.

Photo: Reda Benkhadra · CC BY-SA 4.0

Mamelodi Sundowns lost the first leg of the final 2-1 in Casablanca, then won 2-0 at Loftus Versfeld to take it 3-2 on aggregate. Thapelo Maseko was named best player, Ronwen Williams best goalkeeper. Sundowns collected $4 million and the trophy, made by Thomas Lyte in 24-carat gold plate.But the friction around the edges told the real story. The South African Premiership initially resolved to decline the invitation for Sundowns because of what it would do to the domestic calendar.

And in the tournament's final week, the second leg of the final had to be moved from Saturday to Sunday because the SABC could not broadcast it because of the Soweto derby at FNB Stadium.

The broadcast picture was similarly thin. Matches went out on FIFA's FIFA+ platform, with beIN Sports taking rights in the Middle East and North Africa and Arryadia in Morocco. There was no continental rights deal of the kind that would justify a $100 million prize pool.

A pitchside camera films Italy in 2021. Broadcast reach never approached the scale implied by the AFL's original commercial promise.

Photo: Biser Todorov · CC BY 4.0

 

The Silence

Nothing happened in 2024. There was no second edition, no draw, no fixture list, and no expansion to 16 or 24 clubs. By July 2024, CAF's inter-club committee was meeting in Cairo and even senior figures in the South African game were saying publicly that they had no information about the tournament's future. That month produced what was, for a long time afterwards, the last substantive communication about the AFL.

In September 2024, Motsepe insisted the first season had been a success and that a second would happen, but that schedules were tight with the expanded FIFA Club World Cup, arriving in June 2025 already swallowing the space. That same month, CAF was reported to be reviewing an increase in AFL prize money, an odd thing to review for a competition with no date.Then nothing again for a year. In October 2025, before AFCON in Morocco, Motsepe told reporters that discussions were ongoing, that CAF was pleased with progress, and that the AFL was important and would continue. He gave no details.

On 20 December 2025, in Rabat, Motsepe announced the biggest structural change to African football in decades. AFCON moving to a four-year cycle from 2028, and a new African Nations League for all 54 member associations, running annually from 2029 with zonal games in September and October and finals in November.

 

The Calendar Nobody Can Fix

Money is the reason CAF gives. The calendar is the reason that will not go away. African club football already runs a Champions League and a Confederation Cup from September to May. It runs domestic leagues underneath them. It surrenders players to AFCON, to World Cup qualifiers, to CHAN, to the Olympic and youth cycles. Since 2025 it also surrenders its biggest clubs to an expanded FIFA Club World Cup. The AFL's own scheduling problem in 2023 was solved by making the tournament small enough to be almost invisible.

How tight is the space? In May 2026, CAF rejected a proposal to add a handful of qualification slots to the Champions League and Confederation Cup. The reasoning reported at the time was with the congested African calendar even a modest expansion would mean more preliminary-round matches, and there was nowhere to put them. The Egyptian Football Association revived the proposal in July, after Al-Ahly finished third domestically and missed out on Champions League qualification, and Motsepe confirmed it would go to the Executive Committee while acknowledging that with the calendar already published, nothing was likely to change this season.

If CAF cannot find room for two extra preliminary ties, it cannot find room for a fourteen-match elite tournament in the same window, let alone the 197-match league that was originally sold in Arusha.There is also the awkward arithmetic of prestige. The 2026/27 Champions League winners will collect $6 million. The African Football League champions collected $4 million. Whatever else the AFL now is, it is no longer the richest prize in African club football like it was portrayed years ago.

And there is a new competitor for CAF's own attention and CAF's own sponsors. The African Nations League will occupy September, October and November from 2029, precisely the months the AFL used in 2023.

 

"Later During the Year"

Which brings us to 2 April 2026, and Motsepe's most recent substantive comment on the subject.He said the African Football League would continue later during the year. Then he explained why it had not continued already stating he had not been satisfied with the financial proposals CAF was receiving.Essentially, it was an announcement that the competition has no funding. There is no version of Motsepe’s assessment in which a tournament kicks off within eight months.

The evidence since supports the pessimistic reading. Four months on, the 2026/27 inter-club calendar contains no AFL window. No participating clubs have been named. No draw has been scheduled. No broadcaster has been announced. The preliminary-round draw for the Champions League and Confederation Cup takes place at CAF headquarters in Cairo on 6 August, and there is nothing on the agenda about a third competition.