What happened to Senegal in the World Cup? Have African teams truly buried their tactical indiscipline?

Saidu Bangura: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 2 July 2026

I’m very disappointed in Senegal. I thought they and Morocco were Africa’s two best teams. But you can’t be a serious team when you squander a two-goal lead with only four minutes of normal time left in a major tournament like the World Cup.

Senegal were painfully kicked out of the World Cup last night by Belgium 3-2, despite leading 2-0 until the 86th minute. The old ghost of sloppy concentration and failure to see out games when African teams are enjoying a clear lead came back to haunt the star-studded Senegalese team. And now they’re going home, despite their brilliance on the field.

I’ve watched the evolution of African teams in the World Cup since 1970 when Morocco became the second African team to participate in the tournament following a 36-year wait after Egypt’s participation in 1934.

But the early tournaments had only 16 teams—in 1934, 12 of those teams were European, 2 were South American, one was North American (USA), and the 16th was African (Egypt).

It was a straight knockout competition with no group stage. Egypt lost their match 4-2 to Hungary and were eliminated in the first round. I only read about that tournament in football history accounts, so I don’t have a memory of the quality of Egypt’s football at that time.

Most African countries gained independence in the 1960s. They boycotted the 1966 tournament in England because FIFA insisted that the African champion play a playoff match with a European team that had failed to qualify under the European slots. FIFA insisted that African teams were not good enough to merit automatic slots in the competition.

But the boycott paid off, and Africa got an automatic single slot in the 1970 World Cup. Morocco qualified for that slot and put up a great fight by leading West Germany 1-0 before eventually losing 2-1; they also drew 1-1 with Bulgaria. But I didn’t really watch the 1970 World Cup live in Sierra Leone because the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service (SLBS) showed it only a few months after the tournament.

Again, I really don’t have any memory of Morocco’s style and quality of play in 1970. I followed the tournament largely on the radio, at someone’s house when the SLBS showed the replays, and watched footage of some of the matches in the popular film The World at Their Feet in a cinema hall.

My first real understanding of Africa’s performance in World Cup tournaments was in 1974, when Zaire (now DRC) represented the continent. I had just graduated with my first degree in London.

Zaire’s World Cup debut was a total disaster. They were grouped with Yugoslavia, Scotland, and Brazil. They lost all three matches (9-0, 2-0, and 3-0 respectively) without scoring a single goal. The biggest defeat—which ties with two other World Cup defeats for the worst in the tournament’s history—was the 9-0 thrashing they received from Yugoslavia.

The other two countries that have suffered such disgrace are South Korea, which was demolished by Hungary 9-0 in 1954, and El Salvador, which was taught a football lesson by the same Hungary 10-1 in 1982.

For the first time ever, I was able to watch the entire 1974 tournament live on colour TV. I was completely shaken by the awful performance of Zaire, which I saw as a disgrace to the continent. Overt racism in the British press at the time was shamelessly unregulated.

British tabloids made fun of the Zaire players’ names, and freely and gleefully depicted the players as semi-animals who ate snakes and other wildlife. One picture in one of the papers showed some of the players standing under the heads of horned animals, while background analysis linked their physicality to the ferocious diets they supposedly consumed.

But the one ‘joke’ that really shocked me was the claim that defender Mwepu Ilunga, and by implication the entire Zaire team, did not understand the basic rules of the game. This narrative arose after Ilunga rushed forward and blasted the ball downfield before the referee blew his whistle for the Brazilian superstar Rivelino to take a free kick just outside Zaire’s penalty box.

Africa’s participation was widely questioned: “How could teams from that region be allowed to play in World Cup tournaments when the players were so ignorant of the rules?”

I played amateur football when I was young, and we all knew the basic rules of the game. I simply refused to believe that a player in a country’s national team would not know the rules of football. I felt the British press ran with the joke because there was no respect for Black intelligence, dignity, and rights during that period.

It turned out that Ilunga deliberately kicked the ball to waste time and peg his team’s defeat below 4-0. This was because the President at the time, Mobutu Sese Seko, had sent a message to the players at their hotel that if they lost their match against Brazil by four or more goals, they would not be allowed to return to their families. Ilunga’s gimmick worked: Zaire lost 3-0, and the team returned home safely.

Zaire of 1974 exhibited most of the basic ills of African football that the continent has tried to exorcise. These are the failure to defend corners, a lack of alertness at the beginning of matches, avoiding being caught offside too often, and committing too many tackles that give away penalties or result in players being sent off.

A fifth problem—failure to see off matches when leading in the dying minutes—later emerged when African teams began to show their mettle in World Cup tournaments.

A few examples will suffice. Against Yugoslavia in 1974, Zaire’s zonal marking on set pieces was either non-existent or completely disintegrated. Yugoslavia scored multiple goals from headers off free kicks and corners simply because Zaire’s defenders couldn’t track runners or challenge for aerial balls in the box.

Indeed, watching Zaire play in 1974, I dreaded they would concede a goal any time they gave away a corner or a free kick close to the penalty box. They also conceded goals in the 8th, 14th, and 18th minutes of that match. They seemed completely asleep at the wheel, caught off guard by the quick passing of the Yugoslavs before they could even settle into the match.

Furthermore, Yugoslavia and Brazil cleverly utilised synchronised offside traps that all too often caught the hapless Zaire attackers. Because they repeatedly mistimed their runs, their own counter-attacks were killed before they could even test the opposing goalkeepers.

Zaire also committed too many desperate tackles and fouls, culminating in midfielder Mulamba Ndaye being sent off in one of the matches.

In several tournaments after 1974, we saw many African teams completely undone by elementary set-piece routines. A prime example occurred during Nigeria’s match against Denmark in 1998, when they conceded a goal just minutes into the game because of a failure to clear lines, leading to a 4-1 defeat.

Similarly, a lack of defensive urgency by Cameroon against Russia in 1994, right from the first few minutes, triggered a total defensive collapse that ended in a 6-1 defeat.

There are a number of other cases in which African teams failed to protect their leads when only a few minutes of normal time remained. One good example was the Cameroon–England quarter-final match in 1990.

Leading 2-1 in the 83rd minute, Cameroon were minutes away from setting a record as the first African team to reach a semi-final. Instead of slowing down the game, keeping possession, and defending, they kept pushing forward, leaving themselves exposed and allowing England to equalise and ultimately win the match.

I also recall the Côte d’Ivoire–Greece match of 2014. Côte d’Ivoire had a star-studded squad that year featuring the likes of Didier Drogba, Yaya Touré, Kolo Touré, Gervinho, Salomon Kalou, and Wilfried Bony. They only needed a draw in their final group match to advance to the Round of 16. The score was 1–1 heading into stoppage time.

Due to poor tactical management and frantic defending, they conceded an unnecessary 93rd-minute penalty, losing 2–1 and getting knocked out.

We should also not forget the way Ghana fumbled their chance in 2010 to become the first African country to play in a semi-final of a World Cup when they faced Uruguay in the quarter-finals. Ghana dominated the game leading to the dying minutes of extra time but couldn’t deliver the killer blow.

And when Luis Suárez deliberately handled a goal-bound ball in the penalty box when the match was virtually over, Asamoah Gyan failed to send Ghana through by misfiring the penalty kick.

Exorcising old ghosts: Have African teams truly buried their tactical indiscipline?

I demonstrated in the article titled “The Globalisation of Football is Closing Performance Gaps among Countries in the World Cup” that the gap between the traditional powerhouses of global football—Europe and South America—and the rest of the world, had narrowed significantly in the 2022 World Cup.

I put that equalisation down to Europe’s emergence, through its leagues, as the primary region for training top players from all regions of the world. Nearly all African players play in Europe’s top leagues, where they’re exposed to the tactics of the best managers and interact with the best players.

Most players now know each other as clubmates and opponents even before they meet in World Cup tournaments. There’s no fear factor anymore or perception that certain teams are superior.

African and other newly emerging football regions don’t make many silly mistakes anymore: they know how to keep and pass the ball, defend corners and spot kicks, avoid offside traps, draw out matches or force a draw, launch counterattacks, avoid dangerous tackles, and kill off games.

The group stage of this year’s tournament really underscores the extraordinary progress that Africa has made in the technical aspects of the game. Africa topped all other regions by having nine out of ten teams qualify for the Round of 32. Along the way, teams like Brazil, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Uruguay, and England—traditional heavyweights of the game—experienced great difficulties in beating African teams.

Even though Morocco has qualified for the Round of 16 by beating the Netherlands, the exit of teams like Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, and Senegal in the Round of 32 when they had played so well, raises the question of whether the old ghosts of tactical indiscipline are still haunting African teams when they get to the business end of World Cup tournaments.

I didn’t watch the Senegal–Belgium match because I was travelling. But I saw highlights of it and read and listened to pundits’ views about it. I simply refuse to accept that Africa’s champions should be thrown out of the World Cup after enjoying a two-goal lead for 85 minutes.

More still needs to be done to drill some steel and a sense of invincibility into the spines of our top African teams.