Courageous Pyramids fight back to draw in Champions League first leg

CAF Champions League finely poised at 1-1 after Pyramids' late equaliser against Mamelodi Sundowns in Pretoria

Fortune favours the brave.

It certainly did on Saturday when Pyramids FC were rewarded for their bravery with a 94th minute equaliser from Walid El Karti in the CAF Champions League final first leg.

With 30 seconds of time remaining, Mamelodi Sundowns were on their way to a near-perfect 1-0 result. With away goals in play and Sundowns terrific record on the road (only one loss in the Champions League this season and none under Miguel Cardoso), Krunoslav Jurčić and his charges knew the tie was slipping away from them.

That tension was palpable in the way that El Karti and the entire Pyramids squad and staff celebrated. You would have thought they won the Champions League title there and then such was the elation as seemingly every employee in the club was down on the corner of the pitch celebrating.

And yet it was no less than they deserved.

This season Pyramids have bucked the trend of away sides in Africa. Where others sit deep and try to hold out for a 0-0, Pyramids are aggressive and play the only style of football they know, attacking. We saw that in their semi final against Orlando Pirates where they had two goals very narrowly ruled out for offside and we saw it again in Loftus Versfeld Stadium.

Sundowns themselves went for a bold approach, Miguel Cardoso bringing in the in-form forward Arthur Sales for Jayden Adams, a midfield technician. But the ploy certainly did not work. Lacking the extra midfielder, Sundowns struggled to play through the lines and were time and time caught again by Pyramids in transition. The athletic midfield of El Karti, Blati Toure and Mohamed Lasheen dominated the physical battle and while Ibrahim Adel was marshalled by Khuliso Mudau Pyramids carried the greater threat.

Fiston Mayele squandered two generous chances and El Karti, doing his best Frank Lampard impression, often was finding space as a late runner into the Sundowns box. Sundowns themselves looked toothless and only found joy when going direct into the physical Rayners.

To his credit, Cardoso solved the issue at half time, bringing off Tashreeq Matthews for Adams who brought more control to the Sundowns midfield and brough them greater control. And it was in the second half, when for the first time Sundowns were able to play their intricate football and get behind the Pyramids defence to break the deadlock ten minutes into the second half.

Ironically it was Mudau, tasked with the defensive duties on Adel who was the catalyst. His give and go with Rayners got him in behind where he found Lucas Ribeiro whose shot was saved. Ribeiro made no mistake at the second time of asking. After some pinball in the box, the Brazilian curled home a lovely finish to light up Loftus.

Sundowns dominated from there and looked the more likely to double their lead but in the closing minutes and a host of Pyramids substitutes on, the nerves kicked in. The Brazilians defended deeper and deeper, but it was the old enemy of Sundowns that undid them, crosses from deep. In a stark reminder of their 2022 exit at the hands of Wydad, a deep cross from Lasheen found the late run of El Karti who scored in his second Champions League final, eight years after his first for Wydad.

For a club that has never reached the knockouts of the Champions League, Pyramids showed a lot of composure to ride out a very difficult second half and seize their moment.

One final down, three to go

Traditionally, if a side got a scoring draw away from home, they would be heavy favourites for the home leg where they can dictate everything from a position of strength, but Pyramids are not a traditional club and this is not a traditional situation.

For one, Pyramids do not have the luxury of preparing for the game. They have the small point of a championship defining game tonight against Ceramica Cleopatra. Thanks to a late league collapse from Pyramids, Al Ahly have slipped ahead of the newly moneyed club with just one game to go.

Pyramids wanted the games to be postponed, but with the international break and Club World Cup coming in June, the club season has to be decided by then so the final matchday of the Egyptian Premier League season was moved to a midweek on a Wednesday. Al Ahly are in the driving seat to retain their title, needing to simply avoid defeat when they play Pharco to lift a third successive title.

So not only do they have a game in between their Champions League final, where Sundowns can rest and recover. But even if they win midweek, Pyramids could be entering the second leg having lost a title that just a few weeks ago was entirely in their hands.

On top of that, a week after the Champions League final, Pyramids are playing Zamalek in the Egyptian Cup final. Effectively they have three finals in the space of 10 days. They could be the laughing stock of Africa or legendary treble winners.

The pressure is on.

Pyramids cannot also not count on a tense atmosphere to intimidate South Africa. Where Al Ahly and Zamelek would be able to fill 75,000 capacity Cairo International Stadium twice over for an occasion like this, Pyramids will struggle to fill their 30,000 seater 30^th of June Stadium.

And that is ultimately where so much of this pressure lies. Since the invention of Pyramids as a club seven years ago, they have been craving legitimacy. But trying to carve out any kind of relevancy in Cairo is nearly impossible with Zamalek and Al Ahly both having a century’s worth of history to call upon.

Added to that, the relative failure of Pyramids since their conception to win any silverware and they have really struggled to create any kind of meaningful fan base.

The club is exploring how to make themselves a more culturally sustainable club, trying to reach out to younger fans in Egypt, growing their social media presence in particular. They’ve even considered moving city in order to get away from the red and white dominated Cairo. While all these things could eventually give them legitimacy, nothing quite brings legitimacy like winning.

If they won a treble they would only become the second team to achieve that, with Al Ahly achieving it twice, in 2006 and 2019. It would immediately go down as won of the greatest seasons in Egyptian club football history and to their credit, they will have won that treble in style. They have been the most exciting club to watch in the Champions League this season, from smashing teams in the group stage, to the greatest game of the tournament where they beat Orlando Pirates 3-2.

Pyramids’ future as a club is not guaranteed. They are a club created at the whim of a billionaire and they could fall apart at the whim of a different one. But every victory for them is a step to securing that future. Al Ahly and Zamalek will be here for another century, they are institutions that exist above and beyond football. Pyramids existence may not rely on winning the Champions League, Premier League and Cup but it certainly would turn them into a club that has to be taken seriously in Egypt, in Africa and potentially on the world stage.