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 match-winner, 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.
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 almost 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 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. It was impossible not to wonder what might have been if only they had played. This is, after all, a side with Salah and Omar Marmoush up front. “We were patient and we knew that any kind of mistake would be punished,” Mané said, “so we tried from the beginning to be compact and to press as soon as we lost the ball and put them under big pressure and not to lose easy balls.”
Mané was unsurprised by Egypt’s approach. “Every team has a specific way of playing,” he said. “That is their style which makes it difficult for opponents. This is Egypt.”
Since their return to the Cup of Nations in 2017, Egypt have been the masters of killing games, reaching two finals despite winning only one knockout game in 90 minutes before this tournament, which was why the 3-2 victory against 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 successive 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 – and, given the criticism he has already been subjected to from senior figures within Egyptian football – including Essam El Hadary, the former goalkeeper who led the B side at the Arab Cup in December – it may cost Hossam Hassan the manager’s job before the World Cup.
In a distinctly spiky press conference Hassan himself protested it was “not fair” that Senegal, having played their quarter-final a day before Egypt, had a day extra to recover. He was also unhappy that Senegal, having won their group, had been able to stay in Tangier throughout whereas Egypt, who also won their group, had travelled from Agadir.
It was a win that came at a cost for Senegal, with both Kalidou Koulibaly and Habib Diarra ruled out of the final through suspension after collecting yellow cards. Koulibaly went off injured in the first half, while Diarra was withdrawn at half-time. The balance of Senegal’s midfield has been an issue throughout the tournament – in part a problem of the range of options they have – and they looked brighter in the second half after the introduction of Camara, although that may simply have been a function of Egypt tiring.
The first half had been 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, in their lack of ambition, their reluctance to trust the abilities of Salah, Omar Marmoush and Emam Ashour, had laid the path for the fate that befell them. Mané prevailed again.
