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How Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies Became Africa's First Champions

Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies history: from a 2009 start to the first CAF Women's Champions League winners in Cairo, a 4-0 loss, and a comeback title.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · August 14, 2026

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Nobody was there to hear the goals go in. COVID-19 travel restrictions meant the matches in Cairo were played behind closed doors. So Africa's first women's club champions were crowned in front of empty seats.

Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies were the first CAF Women's Champions League winners. They beat Hasaacas Ladies of Ghana 2-0 at the 30 June Stadium in Cairo on 19 November 2021. They went through five matches without conceding a goal. The club had been founded on 4 September 2009, twelve years before the competition existed.

Chris Horwedel tells the story in "Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies — The Dynasty That Made Excellence Look Routine," an episode of Why We Love This Club. It's worth a listen. The short version is below, with a few corrections.

How did Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies start in 2009?

Patrice Motsepe, who owned the club, started the women's side in 2009. South Africa then had no unified national women's league. Horwedel describes provincial competitions whose regional winners advanced to a national championship. The structure mattered, but it wasn't professional. Players fitted football around work, school and family. Travel was hard and facilities varied.

The geography was strange. A club could rule its province, then meet the best team from another part of the country only in a short national tournament. Sundowns, in Horwedel's telling, were trying to build national-level habits before any league could test them.

Money was still tight inside the club. As late as 2020, Chuene Morifi, who would score in the first Champions League final, still saw her job at a tech company in Johannesburg as necessary for covering basic expenses.

What was the 25-0 win, and what did it say about the club?

The first national title came in 2013. Sundowns beat Limpopo's Ma-Indies Ladies 2-0 in the final in Klerksdorp.

The squad had an unlikely member. Maria Mutola, the Mozambican 800m great, joined Sundowns Ladies in 2010 and helped win that 2013 title. Horwedel says she converted a second-half penalty in the final. I couldn't find a match report that confirms this. A report on the run to that final does have her scoring just before the break in the semi-final against Cape Town Roses. Horwedel's line stands either way: being one of the greatest middle-distance runners in history wasn't enough sport for one lifetime.

Then came 2015. Sundowns beat Galeshewe Ladies 25-0 in Sasolburg, a national championship record that still stands. Horwedel says Andisiwe Mgcoyi scored ten of them by herself. They then beat Cape Town Roses 5-0 in the final.

It's a ridiculous scoreline, and Horwedel doesn't treat it as only a feat. One team trained inside a big institution. Another turned up at a national tournament and found out what that meant over 90 long minutes. The result showed what investment could build, and what the wider system hadn't.

Who built the Sundowns Ladies style?

The coach was Jerry Tshabalala, known as Kapa. He took over in October 2012. Horwedel boils his teams down to three words: positioning, possession and pressing. Fullbacks push on, midfielders swap places and forwards defend from the front. The idea is that no single playmaker should have to solve everything.

The 2019 National Women's League gave that style a full season to prove itself. Horwedel's numbers: 22 matches unbeaten, 21 wins and one draw, 83 goals scored and 13 conceded. The pandemic delayed the formal finish, but nobody doubted who the best team was. A league also changed the job. Sundowns no longer had to peak for one tournament. They had to travel, recover and beat everyone, week after week.

Who were the first CAF Women's Champions League winners, and how did they do it?

Sundowns got to Cairo by winning the COSAFA qualifier. Horwedel says they scored 22 goals in five matches there and let in one. Egypt was different. Goals were scarce, and the defence did the work.

Sundowns beat Kenya's Vihiga Queens 1-0. They beat Nigeria's Rivers Angels by the same score. Then came Morocco's AS FAR, and a goalless draw. The episode has that game as 1-1, but CAF's records say 0-0. The semi-final against Malabo Kings stayed goalless through extra time as well, and Sundowns won it 5-4 on penalties.

“Inside Sundowns, it looked more like a consequence of 12 years spent preparing for a tournament that didn't exist yet.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

The final opponent, Hasaacas, had scored ten goals in four games. Morifi finished from close range in the 32nd minute after a cross from Mgcoyi, and Mgcoyi added the second after VAR checked the goal. Sundowns scored four goals in the whole tournament. They didn't need more.

One more fact. That win made Sundowns, with Barcelona, one of only two clubs to win the men's and women's Champions League of their continents. The men had done it in 2016.

What happened in the 4-0 final loss to AS FAR?

A year later, in Rabat, it all came apart. On 13 November 2022, AS FAR went ahead through a Fatima Tagnaout penalty in the 15th minute. Rhoda Mulaudzi was sent off in the 34th minute and Zanele Nhlapho in the 52nd, so Sundowns played the last stretch with nine. Ibtissam Jraidi then scored a hat-trick.

It remains the biggest win in a CAF Women's Champions League final. It was also a first for Sundowns. Their nine-match unbeaten run at the finals ended there. They had never trailed in a game at the finals before, and now they did.

I think the scoreline flatters AS FAR. Two red cards will do that. Even a player or two down, Sundowns made 315 passes, 15 more than AS FAR, and had 51.7% of the possession. Horwedel's reading is that the continent's model club looked overwhelmed for the first time on that stage. Both things can be true.

How did Sundowns Ladies win the Champions League again in 2023?

They came back in Côte d'Ivoire. In the semi-final in Korhogo, Horwedel says, Boitumelo Rabale scored the only goal against AS FAR. A year after losing by four, Sundowns knocked out the champions.

In the final they beat SC Casablanca 3-0, with a brace from Tholakele Refiloe and a strike from Rabale. Sundowns didn't concede in any of their five games. The title came with a $400,000 winner's cheque.

Ten matches across two tournaments, no goals conceded. Horwedel's point is that one clean sheet can be luck, a hot goalkeeper or a good month. Doing it again after a 4-0 beating looks like a habit.

Why did the Sundowns Ladies coach change, and is the dynasty over?

Horwedel says Tshabalala's long tenure ended after the 2024 season. Godfrey Sapula, a former Sundowns midfielder who had worked in the development system, took over and won the 2025 league. It was the club's eighth national title and sixth in a row.

The handover was messier than that. Sundowns went out of the 2024 Champions League in the group stage for the first time in the competition's history. In December 2024 the club said women players had made allegations of improper conduct against Tshabalala. It hired the law firm Bowmans to investigate and put him on special leave. The outcome was never made public, and he eventually left. The allegations have not been proven. He now coaches Sporting Club Casablanca, the side Sundowns beat in the 2023 final.

Sapula says the game has changed. In a CAF interview he said "It is more difficult now for one team to simply dominate", and he called that good for the sport. The results back him up. In 2025 ZESCO Ndola Girls beat Sundowns in the COSAFA semi-final. TP Mazembe won the 2024 title, and AS FAR won in 2025. Sundowns won their regional title again in 2026 and qualified for this year's Champions League.

What does Sundowns Ladies' success say about women's football in Africa?

The club's advantage comes from its owner, and Horwedel says so. Patrice Motsepe became CAF president in 2021 while his family trust kept the club, with his son chairing it. He calls scrutiny of that reasonable. He also says it shouldn't erase the players' work.

What the money bought is easy to see. The Chloorkop base has training pitches, a gym and rehabilitation facilities. ESPN described the Super League as only semi-professional, with Sundowns the nearest thing to fully professional, and Rabale said they train twice a day. Rabale also said there are now about five teams competing for the title.

That is the legacy Horwedel gives them. Other clubs saw what proper coaching, medical care and preparation could produce, and they copied it. AS FAR became the first team to represent CAF at FIFA's inaugural Women's Champions Cup. Sundowns set the standard, and the first African team in that competition wasn't Sundowns.