For the first time in the five-year history of the CAF Women’s Champions League, there will be no Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies team in the tournament.
The two-time champions were booted out of the CAF Women’s Champions League COSAFA qualifiers by debutants Zesco Ndola Girls from Zambia in the semi-final of the competition on Friday (29 August 2025) in Johannesburg, denying them another passage to the prestigious continental women’s club football.
Sundowns Ladies head coach Sapula has called for a time of reflection.
First, we need to regroup, in a tournament like this with this type of setback you cannot now just want to make decisions. We have to go back and review actually what happened in this tournament and go deep into the analysis of what it is that we need to fix moving forward,” said Sapula.
“We will sit down and reflect with the technical team and see what went wrong so that moving forward we are able to say we’re a team that can again be dominant and win this type of tournament (COSAFA) so that we’re able to play the CAF Women’s Champions League.”
Banyana ba Style have only once lost in the regional tournament – this was in 2022 when they were defeated by Young Buffaloes of Zambia on penalties
Sundowns Ladies won the inaugural COSAFA qualifiers in 2021 and went on to claim the CAF Women’s Champions League trophy the same year. They repeated the double in 2023, but last year received a bye to the continental finals as they were defending champions.
The shock exit this year implies the South African side miss out on a chance of contesting for a spot in the new FIFA Women’s Champions Cup starting in 2026. The competition pits together continental champions and will be staged in January-February. It is one of two new tournaments introduced in March this year by the world football governing body, the other being the FIFA Club Women’s Cup that will be played in 2028.
“It’s a huge set back and we’re really disappointed because I said earlier that we wanted to correct what happened last season in the CAF Women’s Champions League but obviously you can’t do that if you can’t win COSAFA and give yourself a chance to go to the CAF Champions League, so it’s really big setback, we are really disappointed,” added Sapula.
The Sundowns legend adds that failure to win the CAF Women’s Champions League COSAFA qualifiers means they have no alternative but to give their all in the domestic league to return to the regional competition.
“We will now focus on the domestic league, that’s one thing we still have to do and make sure that we win it so that we can give ourselves a chance again next year to play Cosafa. We have to win the league – there is no other way. Without winning the domestic league there’s no chance of returning to the COSAFA tournament,” said the Sundowns Ladies mentor.
After 17 rounds of matches, Banyana ba Style still top the Hollywoodbets Super League log standings on 41 points, closely followed by their second placed neighbours, TUT Matsatsantsa Ladies who are three points behind. But the Brazilians have four games in hand.
By Matlhomola Morake
