Everyone agrees on what Sadio Mané did in the closing minutes of the AFCON 2025 final. With most of his teammates already disappearing down the tunnel in protest, he stayed on the pitch, sought counsel from senior figures, and eventually walked back out to drag his squad with him. Senegal won the title. Mané lifted the trophy. The narrative wrote itself.
But there is a prior question — one nobody seems interested in asking: why was there a tunnel moment at all? And who created it?
Pape Thiaw did not take a calculated tactical decision. He reacted in the heat of the moment — and then apologised for it. That is important to acknowledge. But outcomes are not invalidated by their origins. What happened in those 14 minutes changed everything.
The Final's Sequence of Events
To evaluate what Thiaw did, you have to understand the context he was operating in. The final was 0–0 deep into stoppage time when two decisions arrived in rapid succession — decisions that, taken together, would test the composure of any coaching staff on earth.
Ismaïla Sarr heads home off the bar. Senegal erupt. Then: the whistle had already blown. Referee Ndala had called a foul on Abdoulaye Seck for a push on Achraf Hakimi before the header. Goal disallowed. Harsh — genuinely borderline — but probably defensible.
Morocco's Brahim Díaz goes down inside the box under a challenge from El Hadji Malick Diouf. Ndala — who had been notably reluctant to consult VAR for the Senegal goal — now reviews the monitor under pressure from Díaz, the crowd, and the Moroccan bench. Penalty awarded. The asymmetry in VAR application was impossible to ignore.
Pape Thiaw — already furious — instructs his players to leave the field. Most comply. Only Mané remains, trying to hold the situation together. The match suspends for 14 minutes. The fate of the entire tournament hangs on what happens next.
Mané, having consulted Claude Le Roy, Mamadou Niang, and El Hadji Diouf, brings the players back. Díaz attempts a Panenka — and chips it straight at Édouard Mendy. Senegal survive. In extra time, Pape Gueye scores. Senegal are champions of Africa.
What the Walk-Off Actually Did
Here is the claim: complaining does not work. Throughout the final — and in matches before it — Senegal had been vocal about refereeing decisions. Protests from the touchline. Persistent appeals. The usual repertoire of grievance. None of it changed a single call.
It was only when Thiaw escalated to something genuinely irreversible — removing his players from the field of play — that the entire structure of the match shifted. In those 14 minutes, the referee was no longer just an official managing a football game. He was the focal point of a global controversy, with television cameras, FIFA's president, CAF officials, former coaches, and hundreds of millions of viewers all watching exactly what he would do next.
The walkoff transformed a bilateral protest between a coach and a referee into a multilateral crisis. And multilateral crises, unlike bilateral complaints, produce consequences.
What followed is the clearest evidence that it worked. When the match resumed, Brahim Díaz — who had fought passionately for that penalty and had over 14 minutes to prepare for it — stepped up and attempted a Panenka. A chip down the middle. Straight to Mendy. The psychological devastation of the wait, the weight of world scrutiny, the collapse of momentum — all of it visible in a single, catastrophic penalty kick.
- A disallowed Senegal goal — VAR not consulted
- Ongoing complaints from touchline ignored
- Referee under pressure from crowd and Moroccan bench
- A penalty awarded after VAR review favouring Morocco
- Match proceeding on the referee's terms
- 14-minute global spectacle — all eyes on officiating
- CAF officials, former coaches intervening directly
- Penalty taker psychologically destroyed by the wait
- Panenka chipped straight to the goalkeeper
- Match now proceeding under public accountability
CAF's Own Referees Chief Confirmed It
At a CAF executive committee meeting after the tournament, Olivier Safari, Chairman of the Referees' Committee, confirmed that match officials had been given special instructions not to sanction the Senegal players who walked off the pitch — specifically in order to preserve the match and prevent early abandonment.
"Each Senegalese player who left the field should have been warned immediately upon returning, but we gave instructions not to do so, in order to preserve the match and avoid ending it prematurely."
In other words: the walkoff was so consequential that the officiating body itself modified its own rules in real time to contain it. This is not the behaviour of an institution that was unaffected by what Thiaw did.
What Thiaw Got Wrong — and Why It Matters
None of this is an endorsement of the walkoff as policy. Thiaw himself acknowledged as much: "We shouldn't have reacted like that. We apologise to football." He was fined, suspended, and his federation was penalised over $600,000. Morocco's coach Walid Regragui called it "shameful." CAF condemned it as "unacceptable." These responses were legitimate.
The distinction worth drawing is between intent and outcome. Thiaw's action was not a calculated strategic manoeuvre — it was a human reaction to what felt like structural injustice. He broke the rules of conduct, and the consequences were real. Those facts don't disappear.
But outcomes are not retroactively invalidated by their emotional origins. The walkoff worked — not because it was elegant, but because it was the only escalation left. Every lesser option had already been exhausted.
Mané's Leadership Was Real. So Was Thiaw's.
Sadio Mané's composure in that moment was exceptional and deserves every word of praise it has received. He stayed on the pitch when others left. He sought counsel rather than acting alone. He chose the image of African football over the satisfaction of protest. That is genuine leadership, and it should be celebrated.
But Mané's heroism was only possible because Thiaw created the conditions for it. Without the walkoff, there is no tunnel moment. Without the tunnel moment, there is no return. Without the return, there is no 14-minute wait, no psychologically shattered penalty taker, no saved Panenka, no Pape Gueye winner in extra time.
Mané could not have been the hero of that night without the crisis that preceded him. And the crisis was Thiaw's creation — however inadvertently.
Leadership is rarely clean. It does not always come packaged in the right optics, issued with advance apologies, or arrive endorsed by governing bodies. Sometimes it is messy, costly, and condemned in the moment — and vindicated only in the final score.
Pape Thiaw made a mistake that produced a result. He broke the rules of conduct and paid for it. He apologised, and the apology was warranted.
But before the apology, he did something that 90 minutes of complaints had failed to do: he forced the world to watch.
And once the world was watching, the referee — unsurprisingly — found his composure. The penalty taker — unsurprisingly — lost his. And Senegal — against all expectation — won.
Mané lifted the trophy. He deserved to. But someone had to build the moment he lifted it from.
Leadership is sometimes found in the tunnel, not just on the pitch.
Walter Kwami writes from a practitioner's perspective on systems, governance, and the structures that determine outcomes — in technology and in football alike.