(Football news) After a thrilling end-to-end match, Senegal overcame Egypt in the penalty shootouts to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The two legged play-off finished 1-1 on aggregate after the first leg finished 1-0 in Egypt’s favour, but an own goal by Hamdi Fathi gave Senegal an early lead in the second leg. A total of 50,000 spectators were in attendance at the Diamniadio Olympic Stadium outside of Dakar and despite the hosts being far better than Egypt, they couldn’t score the winner in normal time and the match eventually went to penalties.

It was a feisty encounter between the two teams as the game was often interrupted by niggly fouls, pushing and shoving from players and even the coaches spent most of their time complaining to the officials. Egypt substitute Zizo had a few great opportunities to take the lead after coming on in the 70th minute but couldn’t capitalise on them. Senegal were also wasteful in front of goal as a curling shot by Ismaila Sarr went wide off the far post with only Egyptian goalkeeper Mohamed El-Shenawy to beat.

To make matters worse, Sarr missed another good opportunity in extra time, when his close range shot from Sadio Mane’s cross failed to beat El-Shenawy. Despite the continued dominance by Senegal, the score was level at 1-1 on aggregate with spot kicks deciding the final outcome. The first four penalties failed to go inside the back of the net before Sarr opened the account for Senegal and Bamba Dieng made it 2-1. Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy saved Mostafa Mohamed’s penalty while Mane scored the decisive spot kick to book Senegal’s place in the World Cup.

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