eyewitness
fireworks as a protest, but club president
Hamdi Meddeb will not change his mind
and the curves will stay closed until the
supporters stop fighting.
The fans are fighting partly in
frustration at a lack of economic change
since the revolution. After all, there is
certainly no reason for them to complain
about the performances of their team.
Fakhreddine Jaziri later cancels out
Taha Yassine Khenissi’s penalty and Club
Africain sit back and defend for a draw,
but Moine Chaabani’s side are too strong
and Ivorian midfielder Fousseny Coulibaly
thumps home a winner. Flares rain down
as Esperance take the first derby of the
season and make it 10 wins and a draw
from their opening 11 league games.
Outside of Africa, Esperance are best
known for the presence of their lively and
colourful fans at the last two Club World
Cups, but they could soon become their
continent’s greatest ever side.
Having won the domestic Ligue 1 and
African Champions League titles for the
past two seasons, Esperance are closing
in on an unprecedented treble. Since the
Champions League started in 1965, TP
Mazembe of DR Congo (twice), Nigerian
side Enyimba and Egypt’s Al Ahly (twice)
have all won successive Finals, but no
club has ever won three in a row.
While North African clubs have often
dominated the competition, Esperance’s
achievement is all the greater for belying
a club tournament beset by fan violence
and seized upon by political opportunists.
Esperance have won 29 domestictitles but the Champions League remains
their overriding focus.
“The Champions League is
our objective,” says Farouk Kattou,
Esperance’s veteran secretary. “Winning
Ligue 1 gives us the opportunity to enter
the Champions League and that is the
most important title in our history.”
That importance is not only due to
prestige but also financial reality. When
asked how much prize money clubs get
for winning the domestic league, Kattou
leans forward and curls his thumb and
forefinger together and shrugs. Zero?
Kattou nods.
“We have money from tickets and TV
rights and also the president, who always
makes his money available,” says Kattou
as sunbeams ricochet off the club’s well-
stocked trophy cabinet.
Meddeb is the driving force behind
Esperance’s success. Taking control of
the club when the country was suffering
under dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, he
has led Esperance through the revolution
to new heights.
However, few businessmen at the time
could succeed without some involvement
with Ben Ali’s regime and in 2009
Meddeb controversially called on theclub’s supporters to vote for the president
in what were clearly rigged elections.
Subsequent political revelations,
known as the “Black Books”, detailed
the links between Ben Ali and Tunisia’s
business community, and suggested
that Esperance had benefitted from
government support. Such revelations
only cemented the club as the team
of the establishment, but success
breeds popularity in a country where
the transition to democracy, though
fragile, has succeeded – unlike in other
countries convulsed by the Arab Spring.
Last year Esperance celebrated their
centenary by retaining the Ligue 1 title
and the Champions League, though the
latter was secured after a farcical second
leg in Tunis that did little for the standing
One-sided derby...the empty stand which should have been packed with Club Africain supporters for the Esperance game“Winning Ligue 1 gives us the
opportunity to enter the Champions
League and that is the most
important title in our history”
Esperance secretary Farouk Kattou