The rivalry between Young Africans (Yanga SC) and Simba SC has taken centre stage with the latter claiming the Jangwani-giants have not achieved any miracles by reaching the Caf Confederation Cup final.
Yanga booked their first-ever place in the final of the Caf competitions after qualifying on a 4-1 aggregate scoreline against South African side Marumo Gallants.
After winning the first leg 2-0 in Tanzania, they travelled to South Africa where they defeated Marumo 2-1 and they will now come up against USM Alger of Algeria, who eliminated Ivory Coast’s Asec Mimosas in the final.
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Despite the final achievement, Simba Media Officer Ahmed Ally believes Yanga have played weaker teams in the competition, unlike the teams Simba faced during their campaign in the Caf Champions League.
“Yanga SC’s journey in the competition has been easy, very easy and they have played weak teams throughout to reach the final, teams that don’t have experience in the competition,” Ally wrote on his Instagram page.
“For example in the group stage, they played against TP Mazembe [who are struggling in ICU], against US Monastir [who were taking part in the group stage for the first time], and Real Bamako [with no known experience].
“If you look at this group, there is no serious team apart from maybe TP [Mazembe], who in any way did not deserve to take part in the competition but got the ticket after rivals AS Vita were deducted points.”
Ally continued: “In the quarter-finals, they came up against Rivers United, and it was the first time the Nigerians were reaching the stage and they knew nothing about the competition. It was the same case in the semis, Marumo was taking part in the competition for the first time, and they also reached the semis because the tournament had weak teams.”
On Simba’s journey in the Champions League where they lost 4-3 on penalties to Wydad in the quarters, Ally said: “Have a look, we played champions of Malawi, champions of Uganda, champions of Morocco, champions of Guinea and we finally faced the African champions.
“In short, Yanga’s journey in the Caf competition should not deceive them because they played against weaker teams.”
Yanga have already beaten Simba to the league title with two matches to spare and are in the semi-finals of the Azam FA Cup.