It was the most monumental case of picking up your ball and going home in football history. Over the course of an extraordinary 16-minute exodus, Pape Thiaw and Senegal plunged the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations into infamy. Yet the toxicity has not been contained – the next steps will be telling for the future of the competition and, perhaps, for international football as a whole.
The prevailing emotion from one of the most contentious continental finals conceivable is raw injustice. It was the sentiment that sparked the Teranga Lions’ protest, feeling aggrieved that a soft VAR call was seemingly about to cost them a second Afcon title. The wave of despondency that comes with such gut-wrenching decisions is an all-too-familiar experience for football fans, so in the moment when referee Jean-Jacques Ndala pointed to the spot, there was sympathy for Senegal. It was short-lived.
