CAF Disciplinary Committee v. Al Ahly SC (Champions League Group Stage v. AS FAR)

Al Ahly and AS FAR (Royal Army) played out a goalless draw at Cairo International Stadium on 15 February 2026 in their final 2025/26 Champions League Group B fixture — a match that decided nothing competitively, since both sides had already secured qualification to the knockout stage, with Al Ahly finishing top of the group and AS FAR second. During the match, groups of Al Ahly supporters threw water bottles at AS FAR players and staff as they headed toward the tunnel at half-time, and were reported to have prevented them from entering the away dressing room. This was not an isolated, one-sided incident: CAF had already sanctioned AS FAR for its own supporters' misconduct during the first leg in Morocco on 28 November 2025, fining that club USD 100,000 and imposing a two-match stadium ban of its own — the Cairo incident followed as the second half of a reciprocal pattern across the tie's two legs, not an isolated Al Ahly problem.

The CAF Disciplinary Committee found Al Ahly liable for the Cairo incident and imposed a two-match ban on the club's supporters attending CAF competition fixtures, with the second of those two matches suspended; a USD 50,000 fine for the crowd trouble itself; and a further USD 10,000 fine specifically for the use of laser pointers by fans during the match — a combined USD 60,000. Because the ban's first match fell due before the second was suspended, it landed squarely on the decisive second leg of Al Ahly's quarter-final against Esperance, played 21 March 2026 in Cairo (the first leg having been played in Tunis on 15 March).

Al Ahly appealed both the fine and the supporter ban to the CAF Appeals Committee. The Appeals Committee dismissed the club's request and confirmed the sanctions in full, meaning the second leg against Esperance was played behind closed doors, without the crowd advantage a match of that magnitude would ordinarily carry for the home side.

Al Ahly went on to lose that quarter-final tie, having already lost the first leg in Tunisia 1-0, and were eliminated from the competition after a 3-2 defeat in the fanless return leg in Cairo.

The case illustrates a practical dimension of CAF's disciplinary sanctions that goes beyond the financial penalty itself: a supporter ban timed to fall on a club's next televised, high-stakes fixture can carry sporting consequences considerably larger than the underlying fine, and CAF's Appeals Committee upheld that timing rather than treating it as disproportionate to the original incident — itself one half of a broader pattern of misconduct that had already drawn sanctions against both clubs across the same tie.