TUNIS — Club Africain won its fourteenth league title in May with a last-minute goal against Espérance de Tunis. Two months later, the champions are discovering that the hardest part of winning in Tunisian football is keeping the team that did it.

The club has already lost its captain: midfielder Moataz Zemzemi has signed a three-season contract with CSKA Sofia of Bulgaria, according to La Presse. Striker Firas Chaouat is being courted by Libya's Al Ahly Benghazi, with talks ongoing and a departure described as a real possibility, and coach Faouzi Benzarti has personally intervened to persuade left-back Oussama S'hili to extend his contract. One reinforcement has arrived: midfielder Mootez Zaddem, signed for two years after leaving Iraq's Al Shorta.

The economics behind the exodus

The pattern is familiar across the Tunisian Ligue 1. Clubs carrying heavy debts and capped domestic revenues cannot match salaries offered in the Gulf, Libya or even Eastern Europe, so a championship season doubles as a shop window. The champions' predicament — needing to strengthen for the African Champions League while fighting to keep what they have — is the structural weakness of Tunisian football in miniature: it develops talent it cannot afford to retain.

What retention would take

The levers are known. Continental prize money — a deep Champions League run pays several times a domestic title — is the one revenue source that can fund competitive wages, which makes this season's African campaign financially existential, not just sporting. Longer contracts signed earlier, sell-on clauses that turn departures into income, and academy pipelines that replace stars rather than mourn them are the standard playbook; Espérance's decade of continental consistency was built on exactly that model.

Benzarti, retained for a second season after delivering the title, will learn by the window's close whether he is defending a championship squad — or rebuilding one.