Soccer / Football · The Guardian

Édouard Mendy: ‘Winning Afcon was 10 times better than the Champions League’

Published by The Guardian on September 22, 2026 at 7:00 AM ET

After retiring from international football, the former Chelsea keeper reflects on a Senegal career that – according to him – included two African titles “I had to stay patient and try to have a cool head because everywhere else there was fire,” Édouard Mendy remembers. In the cauldron of the Stade Prince Moulay Abdellah in Rabat, the Senegal goalkeeper was about to face a penalty against the hosts, Morocco, in stoppage time of the Africa Cup of Nations final. Mendy had just been shown a yellow card after a 17-minute delay where he and most of his teammates had controversially headed to their dressing room in protest at the referee’s decision to penalise El Hadji Malick Diouf after a Morocco corner. Continue reading...

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