- By Ray Ekpu
The 2025 African Cup of Nations seemed to be running well. All the trains of the competition seemed to be moving in time until we got to the final. The stadium was filled to the rafters because the host country, Morocco was playing. The Morocco Atlas Lions were facing the Senegalese national team known as the Teranga Lions. Two lions in one den, struggling for success, struggling for soccer suzerainty, struggling for stardom.
That setting was explosive. You could cut the tension with a knife. The two teams had played a technically cautious game and for 90 minutes there was no score. Three minutes into extra time, a Senegalese player Pape Gueye fired a superb left footer that shook the back of the Moroccan net. The Senegalese players kicked the air, some punched it in merriment. But the referee Jean-Jacques Ndala from the Democratic Republic of Congo, disallowed the goal without verifying from the Video Assistant Referee (VAR). A few minutes later the referee awarded a penalty against Senegal and the Senegalese thought that was a piece of injustice that could do them in. Their coach, Pape Thiaw angrily asked his players to leave the pitch. For them Senegal’s misfortune was likely to become Morocco’s good fortune. This was a tense situation that could mar Africa’s football. But there were mixed feelings, some people were enthralled while some others were appalled.
Football, also known as the beautiful game, has moved from being a game to being a game changer, a game changer for footballers and for countries. People who play football in the big leagues are millionaires today, countries that win continental and global football tournaments are widely respected globally. So the stakes are higher for players, clubs and countries than hitherto.
In the middle of the game is the referee, the man or woman who decides how the game is to be played for the benefit of the game. Managing a football match fairly is the referee’s major challenge. But there are four reasons why some decisions made by referees are sometimes disputed. One, a referee is a human being and so he or she can make mistakes, major or minor in the course of the game. Two, referee’s decisions are made within seconds and that leaves him or her with no room for much thinking before his or her whistle goes. Three, some coaches engage in a lot of drama, throwing their hands up in despair, shouting at referees for unfair decisions or talking to the linesman on his side of the field. All of these theatrical displays are aimed at ensuring that the referee’s decisions are favourable to his team. Four, most football players deserve to be actors in Hollywood. Virtually all of them pretend to be innocent by lifting their hands in the sky when they commit a foul; some wag their fingers at the referee, some look sternly and viciously at the referee; some claim to be wounded through a tackle by an opponent by rolling and rolling on the field. If someone is wounded how can he keep rolling so easily like a gymnast? Some hold any part of their body and pretend that they can’t even walk and if the referee calls for a stretcher you may see them get up, limp a little and continue with the game. The trick may have been to waste a few minutes if that will help his team.
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So entertainment on the football pitch today has three components namely: dribbling, goal scoring and theatricals. All of these are happening today because football has become a mega bucks business that brings to people both fame and fortune. So these three components especially the third are threatening to change the nature of the game. It means that Kali, the Indian mother goddess in whom the creative principle and the destructive principle are joined is at work in today’s football.
There have always been mistakes in football. To reduce these mistakes the football authorities decided to introduce the use of the Video Assistant Referee device to assist the referee to make the right decision when controversy inserts itself in the game. It was a mistake for the referee to refuse to verify through VAR if the goal scored by Senegal was a valid goal or not. It was also a mistake for the Senegalese coach Pape Thiaw to order his players to discontinue with the game. Decisions on the pitch are made, not by the coaches or the players of the two teams but by the referee. All coaches and players are bound by the decisions of the referee in the spirit of sportsmanship whether they agree with those decisions or not. By telling his players to move to the locker room thus bringing the match and the tournament to an abrupt end, the Senegalese coach was driving a nail into the coffin of African football. People who continue to see Africa as a dark continent where there is little or no positive development would have been given more lethal weapons to use against the continent.
At present Africa is perceived by some people in the developed world as a continent of hunger and poverty, illegal immigrants, coup plotters, asylum seekers, debtors and dictators who run a feeding bottle economy and who are sit-tight leaders. Football anarchy would have worsened the picture.
One man saved the day. He ran to the locker room and told his colleagues to return to the field of play. The full details of what happened there are not known but what is known is that a player called Sadio Mane made the difference. Mane was not the coach or captain or vice-captain. He was just one of the players, a famous one wearing number 10 jersey. He didn’t need to wear the coach’s jersey or the captain’s arm band to do what was right for Senegal, Africa and football. In football, today good manners and proper etiquette are in the intensive care unit. With steam-rising frustration, those who manage football are wondering how we got to this point. They are punishing offenders but the offences are still piling up. Even though it is the person who throws off ashes that the ashes follow, the game of football can be better served by more heroes like Mane.
Some people might think as Will Rogers said that “being a hero is the shortest-lived profession on earth.” However, being a hero is virtuous. Mane’s name will remain permanently on the minds of Africans and football lovers worldwide because he performed magic when mayhem was going to happen and football was going to get a kick in the face.
Mane began his professional football career with Ligue 2 Club Metz at age 19. He also played for Southampton where he set a new Premier League record for the fastest hat trick record in 176 seconds in a 6-1 win over Aston Villa in 2015. But it was at Liverpool which he joined in 2016 that he achieved global recognition. He finished as the UEFA Champions League joint top scorer in 2018-2019 season winning the Premier League Golden Boot. In October 2021, he scored his 100th Premier League goal becoming the third African to reach that landmark. The two footballers that got there before him were Didier Drogba and Mohammed Salah. At the 2021 African Cup of Nations, Mane starred for his country which won the tournament for the first time. He clinched the player of the tournament award. He made his 100th appearance for Senegal on November 18, 2023. When Senegal won the AFCON on January 18, by defeating Morocco 1-0, he earned the Best Player of the Tournament Award. Mane plays as a left winger who scores with both feet and head winning astonishing aerial battles even though he is only 5’9” in height. He has considerable speed, agility, ball control and fantastic dribbling skills which have made him a terror to his opponents.
Now with what he did in Morocco on January 18, he has added more dignity to his persona than hitherto. He has delivered, by his action at AFCON 2025, a bunch of flowers to African football and that fragrance will stay with him forever. Humble and amiable, Mane remains a man with a fighting spirit, a fighter for good causes for club and country; he remains a role model for youths and a leader that other less talented leaders ought to emulate globally.
Mane has also made massive investment in philanthropic activities that benefit schools, hospitals and football in his country and he is not making any noise about them. He is a quiet giver who does not blow his trumpet. He prefers that his deeds speak eloquently for him.
When the AFCON trophy was handed over to the Senegal captain, he removed the captain’s arm band and fixed it on Mane’s arm and handed over the trophy to Mane. That action spoke louder than a million words: Mane was the man of the moment.
