The CAF Confederation Cup, known as the

TotalEnergies TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...

CAF Confederation Cup for sponsorship purposes, is an annual

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club competition established in 2004 from a merger of the

CAF Cup The CAF Cup was an annual competition organised by the CAF for domestic leagues runners-up of member associations who have not qualified to the pre-existing CAF international club competition the African Cup of Champions Clubs. History The tour ...

and the

African Cup Winners' Cup The African Cup Winners' Cup was a football competition that started in 1975 and merged with the CAF Cup in 2004 to form the CAF Confederation Cup. It was a competition between the winning clubs of domestic cups in CAF-affiliated nations and wa ...

and organized by CAF. Clubs qualify for the competition based on their performance in their national leagues and cup competitions. It is the second-tier competition of African club football, ranking below the

CAF Champions League The CAF Champions League, known for sponsorship purposes as the TotalEnergies CAF Champions League and formerly the African Cup of Champions Clubs, is an annual football club competition organized by the Confederation of African Football and con ...

. The winner of the tournament faces the winner of the aforementioned competition in the following season's CAF Super Cup. Moroccan clubs have the highest number of victories (7 titles), followed by Tunisia with 5. Morocco have the largest number of winning teams, with five clubs from each having won the title. The competition has been won by 13 clubs, 5 of which have won it more than once. CS Sfaxien is the most successful club in the competition's history, having won the tournament a record 3 times. RS Berkane are the current defending champions, having beaten Orlando Pirates by penalties in the 2022 Final.

History

2004–2017: Beginnings

In 2004, CAF merged the

created in 1975 with the

introduced in 1992 to form a new competition called the Confederation Cup, which has since been considered the second African club competition. In the first edition, the Ghanaian club Hearts of Oak won the edition by beating another Ghanaian club,

Asante Kotoko Asante Kotoko Sporting Club, simply known as Asante Kotoko, is a professional football club founded on 31 August 1935 and based in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Nicknamed the ''Porcupine Warriors'', they compete in the Ghana Premier Lea ...

in the final on

Penalties Penalty or The Penalty may refer to: Sports * Penalty (golf) * Penalty (gridiron football) * Penalty (ice hockey) * Penalty (rugby) * Penalty (rugby union) * Penalty kick (association football) * Penalty shoot-out (association football) * Penalty ...

. The following year, Moroccan club AS FAR won the cup against Nigeria's Dolphin FC. In 2006, Tunisian club ES Sahel won the cup against Moroccan AS FAR (thanks to the away goals rule). The Tunisian club CS Sfaxien won the cup in 2007 by beating the Sudanese Al Merreikh 5 goals to 2 in aggregate score (4-2, 1-0). The following season, CS Sfaxien again won the cup against another Tunisian club, ES Sahel. In 2009,

Stade Malien Stade Malien is a Malian professional football and sports club based in Bamako. One of the two dominant clubs of Malian football, their eastern Bamako training grounds host other sports as well, including a successful basketball club. Football ...

won the edition by beating the Algerian club ES Sétif in the final, on penalties. The following season, the Moroccan club Fath Union Sport won the cup against Tunisian CS Sfaxien, winning the return match 3 to 2. In 2011, Moroccan club Maghreb Fès defeated Tunisia's Club Africain in the final, on penalties. The following year, Congolese club

AC Léopards Athlétic Club Léopards de Dolisie is a football (soccer) club from the Republic of Congo based in Dolisie, Niari Department. Honours *Congo Premier League :Winner (4): 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017. :Runners-up (3): 2009, 2010, 2011. *Coupe du Cong ...

beat Malian club Djoliba AC in the final. The 2013 edition saw CS Sfaxien win against Congolese TP Mazembe. In 2014, the Egyptian club Al Ahly SC obtained its first confederation cup by beating the Ivorian club Séwé FC. In 2015, ES Sahel again won the cup by beating South African club Orlando Pirates. TP Mazembe achieved the double in 2016 and 2017, beating Algerian club MO Béjaïa and South African

SuperSport United SuperSport United Football Club (often known as SuperSport) is a South African professional association football, football club based in Atteridgeville in Pretoria in the Gauteng province. The team currently plays in the South African Premier Div ...

respectively.

2018-–present: Moroccan dominance

Moroccan club Raja CA won in 2018 against Congolese

AS Vita Club Association Sportive Vita Club, more commonly known as AS Vita Club, AS V. Club or simply Vita Club, is a Congolese football club based in Kinshasa. History AS Vita Club was founded in 1935 by Honoré Essabe under the name of ''Renaissance'' in ...

. In 2019,

Zamalek SC Zamalek Sporting Club ( ar, نادي الزمالك للألعاب الرياضية), commonly referred to as Zamalek, is an Egyptian sports club based in Giza. It is one of the most successful football clubs in Africa and the Middle East, an ...

beat Moroccan RS Berkane in the final, on

. In 2020 in the context of the

Covid-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, the matches were then played behind closed doors, the Moroccan club RS Berkane beat the Egyptians of

Pyramids FC Pyramids Football Club ( ar, نادي بيراميدز لكرة القدم or ) is an Egyptian professional association football, football club based in Cairo that competes in the Egyptian Premier League, the highest league in the Egyptian Foot ...

by the score of 1 to 0. Since this season, the final has been played in a single game. In 2021, the Moroccan club Raja CA won the cup for the second time by beating JS Kabylie in the

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...

with a score of 2 to 1. In 2022, Moroccan club RS Berkane won the cup for the second time, beating South African club Orlando Pirates in the final on penalties.

Qualification

The competition is composed of domestic cup winners from all 54 CAF member associations and the third-placed-finished club in the domestic leagues of the top twelve-ranked associations discounting/excluding the present year/season.

Format

The competition is played into two phases; the qualification phase and the main phase.

Qualification Phase

The competition begins with a preliminary round and then a first qualifying round played in a "trim-down" knock-out format with the

away goals rule The away goals rule is a method of tiebreaking in association football and other sports when teams play each other twice, once at each team's home ground. Under the away goals rule, if the total goals scored by each team are equal, the team that ...

serving as tiebreakers. The sixteen teams eliminated from the first qualifying round of the

enter the second qualifying round of this competition, unless they are eliminated from there as well.

Main Phase

* The sixteen winning teams from the second qualifying round enter the group stage divided into four groups of four. Each team will play against the other three opponents in a round-robin system

three points for a win Three points for a win is a standard used in many sports leagues and group tournaments, especially in association football, in which three points are awarded to the team winning a match, with no points awarded to the losing team. If the game is ...

. * The group winners and runners-up qualify to a two-legged knock-out rounds which shall be played in two matches, home and away in three rounds (quarter-finals, semi-finals and the finals). * In case of equality in the number of goals scored during the two matches, the team scoring the greatest number of away goals will be declared winner. If the number of goals scored on the away matches is equal, kicks from the penalty mark will be taken.

The Super Cup

The winners will face the

winners in the CAF Super Cup the following season on the former's home venue.

Sponsorship

In October 2004, MTN contracted a four-year deal to sponsor CAF's competitions worth US$12.5 million, which at that time was the biggest sponsorship deal in African sporting history. In 2008, CAF put a value of

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...

100 million for a comprehensive and long-term package of its competitions when it opened tenders for a new sponsor, which was scooped up by French telecommunications giant Orange through the signing of an eight-year deal in July the following year, whose terms were not disclosed. On 21 July 2016, French energy and petroleum giant Total S.A. (renamed ''

'' in 2021) secured an eight-year sponsorship package from CAF to sponsor its competitions, beginning with its flagship competition, the

Africa Cup of Nations The Africa Cup of Nations referred to as AFCON (french: Coupe d'Afrique des Nations, sometimes referred to as CAN, or TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations for sponsorship reasons), and sometimes as African Cup of Nations, is the main internat ...

. Current Sponsors:

Prizes

Trophy and medals

Each year, the winning team is presented with the African Champion Clubs' Cup, the current version of which has been awarded since the competition name change in 1997. Forty gold medals are presented to the competition winners and 40 silver medals to the runners-up.

2009–2020

CAF increased the prize money to be shared between the ''top 16 clubs''. Note: National Associations receive an additional equivalent share of 5% for each amount awarded to clubs.

Broadcast coverage

Below are the current broadcast rights holders of this competition:

Records and statistics

Finals

Performances

Overall winners

Overall performances by country

Champions by region

References

External links

*
CAF Confederation Cup on RSSSF
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caf Confederation Cup Confederation of African Football club competitions