African Cup Winners Cup. One team withdrew befroe playing a match in the preliminary round: AS Police (Mauritania). The club benefiting from this withdrawl – Kamboi Eagles (Sierra Leone) – withdrew before playing a match in the first round. It was almost comic… teams going ahead without playing only to be eliminated without playing. Why did they bother to enlist in the tournaments? But there was more: the first leg between Dragons de l’Oueme (Benin) and Abiola Babes (Nigeria) was abandoned, although the result – 2-0 Dragons – stayed. Both clubs were disqualified immediately: Dragons for fielding 2 ineligible players; Abiola for pitch invasion by its supporters. After this scandalous event another one followed: just before the start of the 1/8 finals, Al-Ahly (Tripoli) was disqualified – that followed the suspencion of the Lybian Federation by CAF for not paying its subscription dues. Thus, AS Sogara (Gabon) and DHJ El-Jadida (Morocco) reached the ¼ finals without playing, their opponents dusqualified. DHJ El-Jadida had it tough in the quarter finals against CS Hammam-Lif (Tunisia) – two scoreless draws, scoreless overtime, penalty shoot-out, and only at this points CS Hammam-Lif was a bit luckier, extracting 4-3 victory. But that was the most the Tunisians could do – they were unable to beat AS Sogara at home and lost the away leg without scoring a goal: 0-0 and 0-3. The other semifinal was Egyptian affair – Al-Ahly vs Ismaili – and produced no winner: 0-0 and 1-1. But Al-Ahly scored away goal and qualified to the final. Which looked unusual – Benin was hardly famed for its football, so it was strange to see a team from this country playing a final. Al-Ahly was the obvious favourite and after the opening leg on home turf everything seemed done and finished: Al-Ahly won comfident 3-0. At Gabon, though, the sure victory evaporated – the hosts recovered sufficiently and Al-Ahly had to battle to the end to keep some lead. They succeeded – AS Sogara won only 2-0.
How good or bad AS Sogara was is hard to tell – first, Benin neither then, nor now is in the vanguard of African football. Second, AS Sogara folded many years ago (1995), giving the impression it had been some over-ambitious special project, which quickly run out of money and support. This final was their best achievement, although a bit lucky, for they did not have opponent in the 1/8 finals. But they eliminated serious teams on the way to the final: Secondi Hasaacas (Ghana) in the first round and CS Hammam-Lif (Tunisia) in the semifinals. They came close to at least reaching ovetime at the final. A team of mystery, really, and given their disapperance in the 1990s, too bad they did not win.
Al-Ahly was the favourite of the final and they did not disappoint. Their road to the final did not look like overwhelming success, but they scored just enough to eliminate every opponent, to prevail by a goal, or, in the semifinal, by away goal. It could be said this was mature team, experienced, knowing what is needed and how to get it, without flair, but business-like. No wonder why: Al-Ahly just won its 3rd consecutive Cup Winners Cup. No other African club won three times in a row ever before. It was not the end of their successful run either – this very likely was the greatest African team ever. And more : Egypt did not qualify to the World Cup finals, but seemingly was the strongest African country at this time. 1986 was a great peak – the national team won the African championship, the clubs – both African club tournaments. All trophies were in Egyptian hands – or feet. The total success spoke of serious development on every level, not at all of some accidental lucky strike. Professional development is murky histroic topic in the realm of African football, but foreign players were playing in Egypt, so professionalism took stable roots in the country – hence, the results.