Saturday December 5, 2020
Alex Song (L) playing for Barcelona in a 2013 Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich.
Arta Solar, the Djibouti club captained by former Arsenal and Barcelona midfielder Alex Song, suffered a humiliating 9-1 CAF Confederation Cup defeat Friday by Al Mokawloon Al Arab in Egypt.
Having lost the first leg of the preliminary round tie 1-0 at home last weekend, Arta were eliminated 10-1 on aggregate while Mokawloon advance to a last-32 showdown with Etoile Sahel of Tunisia.
Cameroonian Song, 33, joined the Djibouti outfit recently on a two-year contract and was given the senior team captaincy plus control over youth development at the club.Song spent seven years with Arsenal from 2005, four seasons with Barcelona, and also played in France, Russia and Switzerland before moving to the Horn of Africa.
A nephew of Cameroon football legend Rigobert Song, he represented his country at the 2010 and 2014 World Cup tournaments in South Africa and Brazil.
Mokawloon, who are also known as Arab Contractors, needed only eight minutes to take the lead and scored eight times before Arta got a consolation goal with nine minutes remaining.
Ahmed Dawooda and Tunisian Seifeddine Jaziri scored twice each for the Cairo club and Farouk Nour Eldeen, Mohamed Essam, Fadi Nagah, Ahmed al Shimi and Karim Mostafa once.
The record winning margin for a team playing at home in the African equivalent of the UEFA Europa League was set by Gabonese club US Bitam in 2013 when they won 12-1 against Guadalupe from Sao Tome e Principe.