CAN U17 Qualifying Tournament : Senegal's Defeat Hurts the Coach

It's a defeat that hurts the entire Senegalese team as much as the fans.

Senegal conceded a 1-1 draw, a defeat for the Senegalese team. On Thursday, October 8, Guinea faced Senegal on Matchday 2 of the U17/UFOA AFCON qualifying tournament, currently taking place in Mali.

It was indeed a refereeing decision that marked the turning point in the match. At a press conference, Ousmane Diop expressed his frustration :

"What bothers me a little is the refereeing. It's a shame, they could have done better in my opinion, but we're not going to complain. We can't say he officiated badly; maybe he didn't mean to do badly. Like our coaches, we don't want to play badly. But sometimes these things happen, and you have to accept it; it's not a big deal. For the match, it's unfortunate, because we were leading until the end of regulation time, before they came back with a somewhat controversial penalty," said the Lionceaux coach.

Tactically, he believes his players were more focused on the result than on the game :

"We scored very early. Unfortunately, they're kids, they wanted to keep the score. As a result, we were a bit tactically disoriented because we followed the opponent's pace, even though we'd asked them to be calm and stick to our principles. But unfortunately, it wasn't possible. We accept that, we'll correct all that. In the meantime, we had plenty of opportunities. As usual, there's one thing that always remains: finishing. Today, we still had chances, but we can only regret it. That's football."

With two points from two matches, Senegal is now third in the group, behind Mauritania, who beat Sierra Leone (2-1) and reclaimed second place. See you on Sunday at 3 p.m. for Senegal vs. Mauritania.