African football has long struggled to balance passion with discipline, and this usual triumph of emotion over institutional authority has often led to chaotic, dramatic scenes in AFCON tournaments. But none comes close to the shameful, unsportsmanlike meltdown Rabat witnessed this past Sunday as Senegal walked off the pitch in protest against perceived referee bias against them.
In making sense of why Senegal behaved as they did, some former footballers, sports commentators, and even ordinary football fans across Africa and beyond have tried to dignify Senegal’s walk-off as a wrong but perfectly understandable emotional outburst in the heat of competition. But there was nothing “understandable” about this unsportsmanlike behavior, and no contextualization should excuse it. It was a direct challenge to the authority of referees, the credibility of the competition, and the basic norms that sustain football as a regulated global sport.
Sunday’s walk-off was the troubling culmination of a long-standing pattern
Still more importantly, coming from Senegal, their team’s conduct on Sunday cannot be dismissed as a one-off reaction to a controversial refereeing decision. Anyone who has closely followed AFCON over the past two decades knows that Senegal has had a troubling propensity for collective indiscipline whenever results appear to turn against them.
Over the years, Senegal’s protests against referees have repeatedly escalated into prolonged disruptions, crowd unrest, and, at times, outright abandonment of matches. During the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations quarterfinal against Tunisia, for example, then-captain El Hadji Diouf led his team in staging a prolonged and vehement protest following Tunisia’s scoring of the game’s only goal. Diouf believed that the referee missed a foul on him in the build-up to Tunisia’s goal, and he orchestrated an explosive defiance that lasted for about ten minutes.
The match resumed after that brief descent into generalized disorder, and Tunisia’s 1-0 win saw them advance to the semifinals. But Senegal’s confrontational response to unfavorable officiating overshadowed this showcase of continental football between an in-form host country and the 2002 World Cup quarter-finalists. “Diouf goes berserk,” The Guardian correspondent in Tunisia wrote of the game, adding: “Senegal lost their cool, then lost the plot.”
Eight years later, that dismissively confrontational attitude resurfaced with far more serious consequences. During an AFCON qualifier in Dakar against Côte d’Ivoire in October 2012, Senegal’s players reacted furiously to a correctly awarded penalty while trailing 1-0. After Didier Drogba scored the penalty to give Cote d’Ivoire a 2-0 lead, Senegal lost the plot once again. Their on-field protests eventually spilled into the stands, igniting a volatile crowd already primed for confrontation. After the crowd lit fires and threw projectiles onto the pitch for nearly forty minutes, the match was ultimately abandoned. The chaos forced CAF to take one of its most severe disciplinary decisions: Senegal was disqualified from the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations.
Senegal appeared to have heeded the lesson. At the previous AFCON tournament in Côte d’Ivoire, they were also inelegant and bad-tempered losers as they fell to the Ivorian team in the round of 16. This time, though, some of the noise and inexcusable descent into collective indiscipline and violence took place in the streets of Dakar. On social media, many Ivorians or fans of the Ivorian team in Dakar shared chilling testimonies of physical and verbal abuse at the hands of angry Senegalese supporters. It took swift statements of African brotherhood and Senegal-Ivorian friendship from the two countries’ authorities to defuse the situation.
Yet, merely two years later, the same script of inelegance, collective indiscipline, and crowd violence played out in Rabat as the world watched the final of what many had up to then described as perhaps the best AFCON in living memory. As millions across the continent and beyond watched, Senegal’s defiant walk-off sent a dangerous message and set an explosive precedent. If normalized, this message — that players and coaches may suspend a final match at will if they disagree with a referee’s decision — would strike at the very foundations of football governance.
CAF and FIFA face a moment of institutional reckoning
Refereeing errors, whether real or perceived, are an inherent part of the game. Football has never promised perfect justice. Procedural authority is what the game promises, and this is what those responsible for footballing gatekeeping should strive to enforce. We cannot allow football to turn into a contest of pressure, intimidation, and brinkmanship.
Discipline, fair play, and willing submission to official procedures matter. If you feel aggrieved or “mistreated,” there are procedures to follow. As such, the vigilante behavior of walking off or descending into interminable petulance at every perceived bias should be given the harshest punishment possible. And this can be done as follows.
For this reason, CAF and FIFA face a moment of institutional reckoning as they consider Senegal’s punishment. Failing to act decisively would signal that collective insubordination is a legitimate tactic. And the consequences of such a signal would reverberate far beyond Africa. As the AFCON disciplinary body meets over the course of the coming days to decide what to make of Senegal’s reprehensible behavior on January 18, they should resist any form of leniency dictated by political calculation or fear of social media backlash.
As a Moroccan, I am not calling for Senegal to be stripped of their AFCON title. But in the name of football, fair play, and the values this beautiful sport is meant to promote, CAF and FIFA must act decisively. But the point of these sanctions cannot and should not be to humiliate Senegal or avenge Morocco. Instead, the point of the coming sanctions should be about deterrence, about making sure that no team will ever even remotely think of emulating what Senegal did in Rabat.
First, responsibility must be clearly assigned at the leadership level. The conduct of Senegal’s players did not occur in a vacuum. It was visibly encouraged, legitimized, and sustained from the bench. Head coach Pape Thiaw bears direct responsibility for orchestrating and prolonging the protest. In any professional sport, such conduct from a head coach constitutes a grave breach of duty. As such, a lifetime ban from official competition would not be excessive in this case. Coaches should understand the seriousness of the consequences that come with using one’s authority to undermine the game itself.
Second, individual players who left the pitch without authorization must face substantial suspensions. Football regulations are explicit on this point. Walking off the field is a regulatory violation. Collective punishment is sometimes controversial, but individual accountability in this case is necessary.
Third, and most consequentially, Senegal as a footballing nation must face competition-level sanctions. A temporary ban from the FIFA World Cup and suspension from at least two future AFCON tournaments would align with past CAF decisions and send an unmistakable message. Again, while CAF and FIFA can still legitimately decide to make Senegal forfeit the trophy given the severity of their misbehavior in Rabat, this is not a call to strip Senegal of its title. Matches are decided on the pitch, and results — however contentious — must stand. The issue here is not who won the final, but how the game was treated and stained in the process.
As the continent pushes for greater respect, investment, and global recognition, it must also demonstrate an uncompromising commitment to discipline and institutional authority. For the sake of the game — its credibility, its future, and its values — CAF and FIFA must act decisively.
