{"id":738360,"date":"2026-07-02T05:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/738360\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T05:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:58:17","slug":"world-cup-2026-senegals-remarkable-exit-after-comeback-and-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/738360\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Senegal’s remarkable exit after comeback and controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

One minute, Senegal were cruising into the last 16 of the World Cup.<\/p>\n

The next, they were left wondering how another dream had slipped through their grasp.<\/p>\n

Manager Pape Thiaw’s side led 2018 semi-finalists Belgium 2-0 with only four minutes left of normal time, after goals from Habib Diarra and Ismaila Sarr. <\/p>\n

But after outplaying their opponents, they somehow “found a way to lose the game”, as ex-Republic of Ireland skipper Roy Keane put it on ITV. <\/p>\n

Romelu Lukaku’s 86th-minute goal sparked hope for Belgium and three minutes later, captain Youri Tielemans headed in an equaliser from Leandro Trossard’s cross – the pair were earlier seen having a heated argument – to force extra time.<\/p>\n

Then came the controversial penalty, awarded for Lamine Camara’s challenge on Tielemans following a video assistant referee (VAR) review, and converted by the skipper himself 125 minutes in. <\/p>\n

It condemned Senegal to further agony, having already endured the pain of being stripped of their Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) title<\/a> earlier this year. <\/p>\n

“Football is just crazy. I couldn’t call any of this game,” former England striker Dion Dublin told BBC Radio 5 Live. <\/p>\n

Late drama, controversy, history and heartbreak – this last-32 tie had everything and here, BBC Sport attempts to make sense of it all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One minute, Senegal were cruising into the last 16 of the World Cup. The next, they were left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-738360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}