Towards the end of the regular part, the match was interrupted in complete chaos after the Senegal coach Pape Thiaw withdrew his players from the field.
The decision came after Morocco were awarded a controversial penalty deep in stoppage time which was missed by Brahim Diaz. Senegal then scored in extra time to win the championship. Before that, the Senegalese thought they had scored the winning goal in the 93rd minute. After Seck’s header hit the post, Ismaila Sarr put the rebound into the net.
However, referee Jean-Jacques Ndala from DR Congo had already stopped the game, awarding Secko a foul on Hakimi. The Senegal bench reacted violently. Since the referee flagged the foul before the ball entered the goal, VAR could not intervene.
Just moments later, the referee was called for a VAR check for a potential penalty for the hosts. In the 99th minute, after reviewing the footage, he awarded a penalty to Morocco due to Seck’s hold on Brahim Diaz. After that, the Senegalese left the field.
After almost 20 minutes of interruption, the Senegalese returned to the field. Brahim Diaz took the ball and played the ball, but Edouard Mendy read it and caught the ball in his hands. It was the last shot of the regular part of the game.
There were speculations that the Morocco and Real forward missed the penalty on purpose, in the spirit of fair play. The goalkeeper of Senegal firmly denies this.
“Did Brahim miss the penalty on purpose? No, of course not! Well, be serious! Do you really think that at the end of the final, the striker of the national team that has been waiting for the title for 50 years wants to miss and that we could have come to an agreement in such a situation? He wanted to score and I deserve recognition because I saved him and that’s all,” Mendy said and added:
“Before every penalty for the opponents, I talk to Sadio Mane. I won’t tell you what he told me. The most important thing is that we bring the trophy home and that we made millions of Senegalese happy. Everything happened in this final. We knew we were in enemy territory. Morocco waited 50 years for the trophy and everything went in their favor. We only had the ball and our knowledge and in the end we won.”
(Vijesti.ba)
