MAMELODI Sundowns beware!
The team standing on the way to your adding a second star above the club’s crest might be rookies on the ultimate stage of continental club football competition.
But they are a useful outfit with the potential to pull the rug from underneath your feet.
Pyramids FC are in the final of the CAF Champions League for the first time this year, and will provide opposition to a Sundowns side seeking a second title in a third final appearance.
That the Egyptian side are only playing in Africa’s premier knockout cup for the second season has got many punting the South African champions as ‘overwhelming’ favourites to win.
The fact that Sundowns got the better of Pyramids in the group phase last year has given further impetus to the assumption Miguel Cardoso and his men will lift the African championship.
That, though, is a naïve outlook at things, given the fickle nature of this beautiful game of billions at the top.
You need only look at how Pyramids dashed the huge hopes of an all-South Africa final by defeating Orlando Pirates in the semi-finals to know that a Sundowns victory is far from guaranteed.
In Fiston Mayele, Pyramids have a goal-poacher supreme capable of sending Ronwen Williams scooping the ball from his own net.
And there’s also his strike partner Ibrahim Adel, who will be available this time around after missing the semis.
His finishing prowess is confirmed by the fact he has scored six goals in the competition, just two behind leading scorer Mayele.
Pyramids may have finished bottom of their group last season, but they came back with a bang this campaign to turn the tables on some of the favourites for the title.
رحلة فريقنا إلى جنوب إفريقيا ✈️🇿🇦#Pyramids | #ملوك_الكرة pic.twitter.com/JDHpRzmiyN
— Pyramids FC (@pyramidsfc) May 22, 2025
They smashed the likes of Esperanca Sagrada, Djoliba, as well as FAR Rabat by big scores – 5-1, 6-0 and 4-1 respectively – as they worked their way to the final.
What the Brazilians will do well to realise is that Pyramids are very hard to beat in their own backyard, the Pharaohs heirs having won nine of their 11 Champions League matches at home –and being beaten just once.
They scored an incredible 35 goals in those ties, and were pretty miserly as they got breached just 11 times.
Those stats suggest Sundowns will have to put Saturday’s home-ground advantage at Loftus Versfeld (3pm kick-off) to great use, so that they essentially render the second leg in Cairo merely academic.
It is a ploy that worked for their predecessors nine years ago, the Class of 2016 winning the first leg at home 3-0 against Zamalek.
They were beaten 1-0 in the second leg, but the work was long done in the first leg and gleefully raised the trophy to become the second South African side after Orlando Pirates to be crowned African champions.
They now have the chance to become the first South African club to win the competition twice, and they will walk on to the pitch as favourites on Saturday.
But they have a tricky opposition standing on their way to glory, the fact Pyramids FC are newbies in the CAF Champions League final notwithstanding.
