Senegal, rated by many as the best African team to ever go to a World Cup, suffered a blow to their chances with star player Sadio Mané being ruled out of the Qatar showpiece after undergoing surgery for his leg injury.
Mane’s club Bayern Munich said the 30-year-old had an operation in Innsbruck, Austria, late on Thursday to reattach a tendon to the head of his right fibula bone, treating an injury he sustained playing in a German league game against Werder Bremen on November 8.
“The FC Bayern forward will therefore no longer be available to play for Senegal at the World Cup and will begin his rehab in Munich in the next few days,” Bayern said.
Senegal team doctor Manuel Afonso earlier announced the end of Mané’s lingering hopes of playing at least some part in the World Cup.
“Unfortunately, today’s MRI shows us that the progress was not as favourable as we had hoped,” Afonso said.
“The result is unfortunately us withdrawing Sadio from the World Cup.”
Senegal, the reigning African champion, had hoped that Mané, a two-time African player of the year, could return at some point during the tournament.
The team’s first game in Qatar is against the Netherlands on Monday.
Senegal play host Qatar four days after it faces the Netherlands. Its final game in Group A is against Ecuador on November 29.
Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk, a former clubmate of Mane at Liverpool, said the World Cup will be poorer without the forward.
“I am very sorry that Sadio misses the match against us because this World Cup simply deserves the best players, Sadio is one of them,” said Van Dijk.
“Sadio is world-class, he is my friend and I will miss him,” he said.
In February, Senegal won its first major title at the African Cup, when Mané scored the winning penalty in a shootout to beat Egypt in the final. Mané also scored the winning penalty in a playoff that sealed a place for the Lions of Teranga in Qatar.
Still, coach Aliou Cissé, who captained the 2002 team at the World Cup in Japan and South Korea where they lost to Turkey in the quarter finals, has players like Édouard Mendy, captain Kalidou Koulibaly, Idrissa Gueye and Ismaïla Sarr to fall back on.
In 2018, Senegal became the first team to be eliminated from a World Cup group stage owing to Fifa’s fair play tiebreaker. Cissé’s Lions would have learnt from that experience.
The other challengers
The other four African teams in Qatar are Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, and Tunisia. No African team has ever qualified for the semi-finals. Besides Senegal, only Cameroon and Ghana have reached the quarter final stage before.
Tunisia, who are making their sixth World Cup appearance, will bank on Wahbi Khazri, their top scorer in qualification, to go through their group which has France, Australia and Denmark.
Ghana are returning to the World Cup after 2014. In 2010, they became only the third African team to reach the quarter finals. The team is grouped with Portugal, South Korea, and Uruguay. Ghana would like to exact revenge on Uruguay whose handball — by Luis Suarez — stopped a goal-bound shot that led to the west African side’s elimination in 2010.
The team will revolve around brothers Andre and Jordan Ayew and Arsenal’s Thomas Partey.
Morocco are returning to the World Cup for the sixth time, their best showing being in Mexico 1986 when they reached the second round. In Group F with Croatia, Belgium and Canada, Morocco can count on several stars like Hakim Ziyech, Achraf Hakimi, Romain Saïss and Yassine Bounou.
Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions hit the headlines in 1990 when, thanks to their talisman Roger Milla, they became the first African nation to reach the quarter finals. This time, Cameroon have talents such as André-Frank Zambo Anguissa, André Onana and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting and the team will rely on their physical midfield play and attack. They will need all of that if they have to survive a group comprising Brazil, Switzerland and Serbia.
Written with inputs from AP/PTI & Reuters
