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Some day, perhaps, Mohamed Salah will get the better of Sadio Mané in a major game, but not on Wednesday, not in the Africa Cup of Nations semi-final. When Senegal beat Egypt in a shootout in the 2021 Afcon final, Mané scored the winning penalty before Salah had the chance to take his. In the shootout in the qualifying playoff for the 2022 World Cup, Salah missed his effort and Mané scored the winning penalty. This time it didn’t get to penalties, but Mané was still the matchwinner, thrashing in the only goal with 12 minutes remaining.
Semi-finals, notoriously, are not for the playing but the winning, but this was among the worst of its type. There were fouls, there was grappling, there was time-wasting, there was the feigning of injury, there were countless attempts to influence the referee, there were numerous explosions of faux outrage, there was a lot of sideways passing, and there was very little in terms of imagination or flair or quality. As a spectacle it was awful; as an occasion it held the attention only because the stakes were so high.
But Senegal will not care, and nor should they. Faced with an Egypt side who sat three central defenders deep, protected by two deep-lying midfielders, and showed almost no attacking ambition, they had two-thirds of the ball but struggled to create clear chances.
Eventually, though, as they worked the ball around the edge of the box, something was always likely to fall for them and sure enough it eventually did, Lamine Camara’s shot hitting Hamdy Fathy and spinning to Mané who controlled it and, from just outside the box, hit a ferocious snapshot past Mohamed El Shenawy. Egypt appealed for handball, but it had struck Mané’s chest. They appealed for offside, but against a defence that sat that deep, even Nicolas Jackson couldn’t stray. The goal stood and Egypt were out having never really given themselves a chance.
Since their return to the Cup of Nations in 2017, Egypt have been the masters of killing games, which was why the 3-2 victory over Côte d’Ivoire in the quarter-final seemed so striking. That was more like Hassan Shehata’s Egypt of the golden age when they won three straight Cups of Nations between 2006 and 2010. But this was like the worst of Egypt’s knockout ties as they ground their way to the 2017 and 2021 finals – not that it was entirely their fault.
The first half was dreadful, little more than a string of stoppages stitched together with very brief passages of football, interspersed with moments of a player going down and sitting, arms outstretched, looking aghast at the Gabonese referee Pierre Atcho as he declined to give them a free-kick. It was tense, nervous and bitty, a game in which no decision was too minor to be contested.
Egypt’s Hossam Abdelmaguid and Senegal’s Kalidou Koulibaly both ruled themselves out of a potential final with early fouls, and Koulibaly was then forced off with injury to be replaced by Chelsea’s Mamadou Sarr, who is on loan at Strasbourg. Koulibaly had missed the last-16 win over Sudan after being stupidly sent off in the final group game against Benin and had, frankly, been fortunate only to receive a one-game ban for quite a nasty studs-to-calf challenge. At 35, he is not the player he was at his Napoli peak, but his leadership role should not be underestimated.
The game had been billed as another chapter in the ongoing rivalry between Salah and Mané and, although neither was much involved, there was a moment seven minutes before the break in which the Liverpool forward clipped his former clubmate’s heel. As a fracas broke out in the technical areas – mainly jostling and aggressive pointing that ended with the two coaches, Hossam Hassan and Pape Thiaw, embracing – Habib Diarra picked up a yellow card that will keep him out of Senegal’s next game.
The introduction of Trézéguet at half-time, replacing Ahmed Fatouh at left wing-back was at least a gesture of aggressive intent from Hassan. The Al Ahly midfielder’s lack of defensive experience was shown up almost immediately as Iliman Ndiaye skipped by him, and he was a little fortunate to get away with an elbow jab into the chest of Pape Gueye as the two jostled waiting for a corner but the path of grouchy tedium was set and nothing much bad-tempered continued to happen.
But Egypt, in their lack of ambition, their reluctance to trust the abilities of Salah, Omar Marmoush and Emam Ashour, had laid the oath for the fate that befell them. Mané prevailed again.
