Caf Champions League: Medeama Showing Kotoko and Hearts How to Do It

Following Medeama SC's qualification to the Group Stage of the CAF Champions League, Joy Sports editor, Fentuo Tahiru Fentuo, explores the factors that have led to the club's latest success, and argues that the country's two biggest clubs, Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko, can learn from the Mauve and Yellows.

Failing to emerge unscathed from a tough Group B pool — where they had the competition's three most successful clubs for company — was no great embarrassment, as Chelsea only lost one game of six; only record [and eventual] champions Al-Ahly had any fun against Medeama, handing out a 4-1 thrashing that would ultimately come back to bite the Ghanaians.

Medeama have booked a place in the Group Stage of the Caf Champions League for the first time in their history.

It has taken Medeama SC, another side making its Champions League debut, to break that 11-year jinx.

Having sufficiently proven their worth at that level, Parker and his team set their sights next on the more prestigious platform of the Champions League, but gracing that bigger stage would require that they first conquer their local realm.

Finally handed their chance in the Champions League, the Mauve and Yellows have made the most of it, and this year, irrespective of how the rest of it goes, would surely go down as their annus mirabilis.

In the aftermath of that last triumph, only once has either team featured in a Champions League group stage — both in 2006, incidentally — at a time Medeama didn't even exist as an entity.