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How did TP Mazembe reach the 2010 Club World Cup final?

How did TP Mazembe reach the Club World Cup final in 2010? Two wins in Abu Dhabi, a bouncing goalkeeper and a club started by monks. The full story.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 29, 2026

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On 14 December 2010, in Abu Dhabi, a goalkeeper named Robert Kidiaba sat down on the grass and started to bounce. He bounced across the turf like a man riding a machine nobody else could see. FIFA's own website calls it the donkey dance.

TP Mazembe reached the 2010 Club World Cup final by beating Mexico's Pachuca 1-0 in the quarter-final. They then beat Copa Libertadores champions Internacional 2-0 in the semifinal. That made them the first team from outside Europe and South America to reach the final. Inter Milan beat them 3-0 four days later.

That much is on the highlight reel. The rest is stranger: a team started by monks for a scout troop, a mining fortune, and an argument about money that the episode of Why We Love This Club host Chris Horwedel devoted to Mazembe doesn't pretend away. Listen to it if you want the full tour. Here is the version with the names and dates checked.

Who started TP Mazembe, and why were monks involved?

In 1939, Benedictine missionaries who ran the Saint-Boniface Institute in Élisabethville, now Lubumbashi, started a football team for pupils who spent most of their spare time in the Boy Scouts. They called it FC Saint-Georges, after the scouts' patron saint.

It went straight into the top division of the federation for Congolese clubs under Belgian rule. It finished third in its first season.

The names kept changing. In 1944 it became Saint Paul F.C. Later a tyre company, Englebert, put its name on the shirts. In 1966 the club went a whole season without losing and added "Tout Puissant", which means Almighty.

Horwedel notes that this is the kind of nickname that gets awkward after three straight defeats. Mazembe have mostly won enough to get away with it. The modern name came later, when Mobutu's government told institutions to drop European names. The black raven on the badge matches the black and white shirts.

What did Mazembe win in 1967 and 1968?

The African Cup of Champions Clubs, twice in a row. They won it in 1967 and 1968, and reached the final four years running, 1967 to 1970. They were also the first side to defend the title successfully, and nobody repeated it until Enyimba in 2003 and 2004.

Then things went quiet. A 1980 Cup Winners' Cup brought a brief revival, and then 18 years passed without another continental campaign.

The club's own history says that when Moïse Katumbi was in exile in Zambia in 1995, he heard about a match at which only 300 people turned up. A Lubumbashi derby, the biggest fixture in town, drew about a thousand.

Keep those numbers in mind. The superclub of the 2010s started from there.

How did Moïse Katumbi change TP Mazembe?

He took over in 1997, and by the club's own telling he didn't ask for the job. A former Mazembe player put his name forward for the committee without asking him. Katumbi had made his money in mining, transport and other businesses. He later became governor of Katanga Province and then a major opposition politician.

The episode is blunt about what followed. Mazembe built facilities and paid salaries far beyond anything else in Congolese football. They also built an academy, improved recruitment and pulled in players from across Central and Southern Africa, Zambia especially.

The payoff came in 2009. In the CAF Champions League final, they lost 2-1 at Owerri to Heartland of Nigeria, then won 1-0 in Lubumbashi. The aggregate was 2-2 and Mazembe went through on away goals. It was their first continental title in 41 years.

The 2009 Club World Cup was a flop. They lost 2-1 to Pohang Steelers, then 3-2 to Auckland City in the fifth-place match, and finished sixth.

“TP Mazembe had not become the best club in the world. They had forced the football world to expand its idea of who could reach the final.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

A year later they won Africa again, beating Espérance of Tunis 6-1 over two legs. It was not a smooth season. Star striker Trésor Mputu was banned for a year for assaulting a referee and missed the tournament. The coach, Lamine N'Diaye, had taken over after Diego Garzitto left before the African Champions League semifinals.

How TP Mazembe reached the Club World Cup final, match by match

Quarter-final, 10 December: Pachuca. Mbenza Bedi lashed in the only goal after a pass from Mulota Kabangu. ESPN has it at the 20th minute. Then it got ugly. Pachuca hit the woodwork twice and Kidiaba kept saving, and Stoppila Sunzu was sent off with nine minutes left. Mazembe held on with ten men. Bedi took the match ball home as a souvenir.

Semifinal, 14 December: Internacional. The Brazilians had won this tournament in 2006 by beating Barcelona. Their fans travelled to Abu Dhabi in huge numbers expecting a repeat. The hosts of the match, so to speak, were not on Mazembe's side. About 20,000 people were there.

Internacional had the ball and the chances. Kidiaba stopped them, and the episode's description of the evening is basically one long list of his saves.

Then, eight minutes into the second half, Kabangu tamed the ball inside the box and steered a half-volley inside the right-hand post. With five minutes left, Kaluyituka took the ball wide on the left, beat Pablo Guiñazú with a series of step-overs and drove a low shot into the bottom-left corner. Kidiaba started bouncing.

Internacional's coach, Celso Roth, was gracious about it. "It was time for Africa to reach the final and unfortunately it has been at our expense," he said. Mazembe's coach said the result was good for the Congolese people.

What happened in the final against Inter Milan?

The final was on 18 December, and it was as hard as the episode says. Goran Pandev and Samuel Eto'o scored in the first half and Jonathan Biabiany added a third in the 85th minute. Mazembe lost 3-0.

Nobody in Abu Dhabi seriously argued they were the better team. The episode doesn't either. Its line is that Mazembe didn't become the best club in the world. They changed the list of clubs allowed to imagine it.

It had been a closed shop. Teams from Europe and South America had contested the finals of the first six editions. The episode says no other African club has matched Mazembe's run since.

Did money make TP Mazembe's run unfair?

Partly, and the episode says so. This was not a village side that wandered across Africa by accident. Mazembe became a rich club in a league where opponents regularly deal with travel problems, unpaid wages and bad stadiums. Horwedel's view is that both readings, the rival's and the supporter's, belong in the story.

The money is real. One profile reports that Katumbi put $35 million into the stadium finished in 2011, and that the club owns two private jets. The same profile says Mputu reportedly earned about $10,000 a week, the highest salary among African footballers. That profile is a small site and the figures are reported, not audited, so treat them as a rough guide.

My own view is that the money explains why Mazembe got to Abu Dhabi. It doesn't explain how they beat Internacional. Mazembe were rich by Congolese standards and poor by world standards. Inter Milan's squad that week had Eto'o on it. What they did have was a keeper who made 2010's most watchable saves and a striker who could take a half-chance in front of a packed stand.

Why does the 2010 run still matter?

Because it moved the line. Isaac Kasongo, a midfielder in that squad, told FIFA "If we played in the final of the Club World Cup, why shouldn't another team do it?" The club kept winning too. They took a fifth Champions League in 2015 and added Confederation Cup titles in 2016 and 2017.

The oddest tribute is in Brazil. After Internacional went out, their city rivals Grêmio had a field day. Two beers were made, the Mazembier and the Kidiaba. Then, in 2014, a new bridge opened in Porto Alegre whose shape looks like a giant M, and everyone calls it the Viaduto Mazembe.

A Congolese club beat Internacional once. Grêmio's fans have been bringing it up in concrete ever since.