the national championship and came out early in the cup against ES Zarzis on penalty shootout. The player Francileudo Santos was the scorer of the Tunisian league to be the first scorer from ESS for almost 30 years. The team then signed with coach Lotfi Benzarti to train the club who is the brother of former coach Faouzi Benzarti. Lotfi managed to win the CAF Cup in 1999 after overcoming big clubs such as Zamalek in the semi-final and Wydad Casablanca in the final. ESS continued his impressive performances in African competitions and the team reached the second place in 2000 in addition to withdrawing from the semi-finals against Club Africain. In the next season with the Serbian coach Ivica Todorov, the team won second place before being defeated in the Cup final against CS Hammam-Lif in the first match at the Stade 7 November in Radès which was opened for the 2001 Mediterranean Games. The team also reached the CAF Cup final in the same year before the defeat against JS Kabylie. In 2002, ESS won second place in the league for the third time in a row but did not play Tunisian Cup that year due to the overcrowding after Tunisia qualified for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. In 2003, Frenchman René Lobello was named coach of the club and the team continued to win second place in the local tournament again, in addition to defeating Espérance in the quarter-final 1–0, but the team managed to win the 2003 African Cup Winners' Cup after beating the Nigerian team Julius Berger 3–0 so that ES Sahel came the most Tunisian teams winning the African titles. The team continued to fight with the French school to appoint Bernard Simondi as coach of the club. The team took second place in the local championship to become the node of the team and they came out of the semi-finals of the cup against Espérance on penalties and also was defeated in the African Super Cup against Enyimba. The team played in the same season the 2003–04 Arab Champions League before coming out in the second round against Al Ahly SC and Ismaily SC of Egypt with difficulty. At the end of the year, the legend Abdelmajid Chetali took charge of the team after reaching the final of the African Champions League for the first time in their history before being defeated against