Colombian-born striker Brayan Leon saw his penalty saved but tucked away the rebound on \u200bSaturday to put South Africa\u2019s Mamelodi Sundowns \u200cthrough to the African Champions League final at the expense of Esperance of Tunisia.<\/p>\n
Leon had his 35th-minute spot kick \u200bparried by visiting goalkeeper Bechir Ben Said \u200bbut snapped up the rebound to ensure a \u20601-0 home win at Loftus Versfeld.<\/p>\n
Leon had scored \u200bthe only goal of last Sunday\u2019s first leg \u200bin Tunis and the 2-0 aggregate triumph means Sundowns are through to the final for a second successive season.<\/p>\n
They will \u200btake on either Morocco\u2019s Royal Armed Forces or \u200bRenaissance Berkane who meet later on Saturday with the military \u200cside \u20602-0 up from last weekend\u2019s first leg in Rabat.<\/p>\n
Sundowns, runners-up last season, were awarded the penalty after a throw-in back to Ben Said caught the \u200bgoalkeeper napping \u200bas he \u2060tried to clear, with Leon sprinting down on him and getting a touch \u200bto the ball before the keeper made \u200bcontact \u2060with him as he attempted to kick clear the ball.<\/p>\n
Esperance came close to an equaliser minutes before \u2060halftime \u200bwhen an effort off the \u200bknee of French striker Florin Danho struck the Sundowns\u2019 crossbar.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":32389,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-32387","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Leon had scored \u200bthe only goal of last Sunday\u2019s first leg \u200bin Tunis.","published_date":"","news_description":"Leon had scored \u200bthe only goal of last Sunday\u2019s first leg \u200bin Tunis.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32388,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32387\/revisions\/32388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=32387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}