{"id":41037,"date":"2026-07-29T17:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=41037"},"modified":"2026-07-29T17:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T15:00:26","slug":"sundowns-begin-betway-premiership-season-as-africas-top-ranked-club","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sundowns-begin-betway-premiership-season-as-africas-top-ranked-club\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundowns begin Betway Premiership season as Africa&#8217;s top-ranked club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With South Africa&#8217;s 2026\/27 Betway Premiership season about to kick off, Mamelodi Sundowns head into the new campaign as Africa&#8217;s number one club in CAF&#8217;s five-year rankings, overtaking Egyptian giants Al Ahly.<\/p>\n<p>Sundowns&#8217; remarkable consistency, winning the 2025\/26 CAF Champions League, reaching the final the previous season, and making the semi-finals in each of the last four editions, has propelled them to the top of the continental standings.<\/p>\n<p>With Al Ahly failing to qualify for this season&#8217;s CAF Champions League, Sundowns have an opportunity to extend their lead at the summit of the rankings.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of Africa&#8217;s top five is made up of Esperance de Tunis, Morocco&#8217;s RS Berkane, and Algeria&#8217;s USM Alger, who lifted last season&#8217;s CAF Confederation Cup.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":31742,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-41037","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The rest of Africa's top five is made up of Esperance de Tunis, Morocco's RS Berkane, and Algeria's USM Alger.","published_date":"","news_description":"The rest of Africa's top five is made up of Esperance de Tunis, Morocco's RS Berkane, and Algeria's USM Alger.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41037","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\/41037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41039,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41037\/revisions\/41039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=41037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}