Senegal’s first winning coach Cisse dedicates AFCON victory to fans
Coach Aliou Cisse has dedicated Senegal’s first AFCON trophy to his country men and women.
Against all odds Senegal finally won AFCON title to match their continental status after the final match against Egypt on Sunday to bring to a thrilling conclusion the 33rd edition of the biennial continental competition.
Player of the Tournament Sadio Mane was the hero as he overcame a fourth-minute penalty miss to net the decisive spot kick in the shootout following a 0-0 draw in which the West Africans had had the better of the chances.
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In victory, the Teranga Lions become the 15th different side to conquer the continent, finally drawing a line under 20 years of regret since the nation’s finest side — the team that reached the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal — fell just short against Cameroon in the AFCON final earlier that year.
Then, like now, the contest was decided on penalties, although while it was Cisse who missed the decisive spot kick in the final shootout in Bamako 20 years ago, here he was the perhaps the happiest man in the Stade d’Olembe, having made history as Senegal’s first AFCON-winning head coach.
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It’s certainly well overdue for a man who knows triumph and disaster — those two most fickle of imposters — more intimately than he would surely like.
As Cisse pointed out earlier in the week, it’s impossible to discuss African football and the continent’s biggest sides without referring to Senegal, even though — unlike CAF’s other big dogs — they’d never previously got their hands on the AFCON title.
They’ve produced African Footballer of the Year winners, had players who have won the Premier League and the Champions League, and are one of only three African nations to have reached the World Cup quarterfinals, yet the AFCON crown had always eluded them before Sunday evening.
“I dedicate this [victory] to the people of Senegal,” Cisse told ESPN after the match. “From independence to now, we never had a star on our shirt … and now we have the first one.
“We deserved it, and when you consider the match in its entirety, and I never doubted.”
Before the showdown with Egypt, they were the only team in AFCON history to have reached two finals without ever having won one, and a third failure at the final hurdle would surely have represented a monumental mental obstacle for future generations to overcome.
Instead, Sunday’s success was the fruit of the immense and consistent work of Cisse and his staff in the near-seven years since they took the helm of the Lions, then languishing outside the top 60 in the FIFA world rankings.