This being the 14th season in which the Reds of Msimbazi, Simba, play in the CAF Champions League, manager Dimitar Pantev and his technical bench will have only one job on Sunday, October 26, 2025 — to push the team into the airspace of Esperance, Al Ahly and Mamelodi Sundowns.
How so? Al Ahly of Egypt, the historic champions, Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa and Esperance are among the few clubs that have been almost guaranteed to reach the CAF group stage for the past seven years. Every year they are in the groups.
Despite not having a history of winning a title in either the CAF Champions League or even the Confederation Cup, Simba appears to have one of the best records from the East African region in attempting to enter the orbit of those African football giants.
Within the past seven years, Simba have reached the CAF group stage six times, five of those consecutively. If Pantev and his assistant, Seleman Matola, complete the remaining task against Nsingizini Hotspurs — after winning the first leg 3–0 — Simba will have qualified for the group stage six times in a row.
This is a record for teams in the East African region across five consecutive editions — three of them in the Champions League (2020–21, 2022–23 and 2023–24) and the others in the Confederation Cup (2021–22 and last season 2024–25), where Simba reached the final against RS Berkane.
Within East and Central Africa, only Simba and Al Hilal Omdurman of Sudan have had that kind of consistency in the past six years in reaching the group stage.
Beyond five straight group-stage appearances, Simba have exited at the quarter-final stage four times in those runs, and only last time did they finally break that barrier by reaching the final — which they lost to Berkane 3–1 on aggregate.
The bigger task now is for Pantev to take Simba into the group stage, then beyond the quarters as has been customary, and push even further — a test that Fadlu Davids passed last season. On top of that, lifting the trophy is the record Simba are most awaited to deliver.
