Wydad The confederation of African football (CAF) announced Ethiopian referee Bamlak Tessema will officiate the decisive second leg game of the Champions League final between Morocco’s Waydad and Egypt’s Ahly.
Wydad will host Ahly in the second leg of the final on 11 June at Stade Mohammed V, while the first leg will be officiated by Libyan referee Ibrahim Mutaz on 4 June at Cairo International Stadium.
Bamlak, who has officiated 38 games in the CAF Champions League since his debut in the 2012/13 season, will take charge of the high-pressure game.
The 43-year old referee has officiated two Champions League finals in his career and Ahly ended on the losing side on both occasions.
Bamlak officiated the first leg of the 2017 final in Cairo and the Red Devils were held by Wydad to a 1-1 draw before eventually losing the title in Morocco after a 1-0 defeat.
He was also in charge of the return leg of the 2018 which Ahly lost 3-0 in Tunisia to hand Esperance of Tunisia the title following a 4-3 win on aggregate.
Bamlak officiated ten Champions League games for Ahly and four games for Wydad. He also made three appearances in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, where he officiated Spain’s 1-0 win over Australia, Brazil’s 3-1 win over Saudi Arabia, and Mexico’s 3-1 win over hosts Japan.
Ahly booked their place in the 2023 Champions League final after beating Tunisia’s Esperance 4-0 on aggregate, while Wydad made it on the away goal rule after drawing 2-2 with South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns.

In what will go down as a classic in Indian road running history, Ethiopia’s Tsehay Gemechu won the women’s crown while Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe took the men’s title at the 15th edition of the TCS World 10K Bengaluru, a World Athletics Gold Label road race.
Sawe, who moved to fifth on the world 10km all-time list with his PB of 26:49 in Herzogenaurach last month, ran a superbly-paced race to win in a close contest and Tsehay Gemechu was equally impressive in the way she kicked on at the end. Tsehay ran 31:38 while Sawe’s winning time was 27:58.
It was an Ethiopian top three in the women’s race, with Fotyen Tesfay finishing four seconds behind Tsehay and the experienced Dera Dida only seven seconds shy of the winner.
It all came down to the final kilometer after the trio ran together, but a strong finish by Tsehay secured this year’s Tokyo Marathon runner-up the 10km crown. In her previous visit to Bengaluru in 2019, Tsehay had finished sixth.

Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) have won the Higher League, Ethiopia’s second tier league, to earn promotion to the BetKing Ethiopia Premier League.
They were crowned as Champions of Group A in the Ethiopian Higher League on Wednesday.
Commercial Bank beat Sendafa Beke 4-1 in their last match of the season and raised their points haul to 60.
The team received the trophy during the closing ceremony of Group A that was held at the Abebe Bikila Stadium.
CBE’s promotion to Ethiopia Premier League were sealed with two matches to spare.
The club has been in the Higher League for the last six years after being relegated from the Premier League.
The CBE women ‘steam also won the Ethiopian Women’s Premier League for the sixth time, so this has been a great year for the club.

A barrier was also broken at the Night of the 10,000m PBs, another World Athletics Continental Tour Silver event, at Parliament Hill Fields Athletics Track in London, UK, on Saturday (20), as Ethiopia’s Mizan Alem Adane ran 29:59.03 to become the 12th woman to ever go sub-30:00 in the discipline.
The 21-year-old, who won the world U20 5000m title in 2021, stayed true to the meeting’s name as she took almost three minutes off her previous 10,000m PB, set during her only other race over the distance in 2019.
She won by more than a minute and was followed over the finish line by USA’s Weini Kelati (31:04.16) and Italy’s Nadia Battocletti (31:06.42), who both also set PBs, while Britain’s Jessica Warner-Judd finished fourth (31:09.28) and Ethiopia’s Hawi Feysa placed fifth (31:09.85).
The men’s race was won by USA’s Olympic and world 5000m medallist Paul Chelimo, who ran a PB of 27:12.73 in the third 10,000m race of his career.
He claimed a clear victory, with the runner-up spot secured by Kenya’s Vincent Kiprotich Mutai in a PB of 27:31.31.
Israel’s Tadesse Getahon was third (27:33.99 PB), Burundi’s Egide Ntakarutimana fourth (27:37.09) and Japan’s Ren Tazawa fifth (27:40.40).