Egyptian Football Association president Gamal Allam has revealed a request has been made for the World Cup qualifier against Senegal to be replayed.
Just weeks after the dramatic Africa Cup of Nations final between two of the biggest heavyweights in the African game, both sides meet again this week in a battle to head to this year’s World Cup.
A fourth-minute own goal by Senegal goalkeeper Saliou Ciss was enough to give Egypt a first-leg 1-0 win in Cairo. But Villarreal striker Boulaye Dia opened the scoring for Senegal in the early minutes of the second leg to make it 1-1 on aggregate.
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And after 120 minutes of football couldn’t separate the two teams, the tie was decided by a penalty shoot-out on Tuesday night. Salah missed his spot-kick but fellow Liverpool forward Mane scored to send Senegal through to this winter’s World Cup in Qatar.
However, the game was surrounded by many controversies. First, the Egyptian team bus got delayed, which led to reports of the EFA requesting to postpone the game by 30 minutes.
Then, Egyptian players had bottles thrown at them during their warm-up, before many of Egypt’s players, including Salah, were reportedly subject to racist abuse. While the Liverpool forward also had multiple lasers shined in his eyes before he took his penalty.
And as a result of such events, EFA president Allam has stated that Egypt have already requested a replay and will be presenting to FIFA officials why they believe the game should be replayed.
"Hani Abu Rida, Hassan Mustafa and the Egyptian officials in the African and International Federations must intervene to support the Egyptian team,” he told Youm7 Sport.
"I am on my way to Qatar to attend the FIFA Congress on Thursday afternoon. We asked to meet FIFA President Gianni Infantino as well as Patrice Motsepe, President of the Confederation of African Football.
“We asked for a replay of the match because the match was held in a strange atmosphere, and if we had lost in normal circumstances, we would have congratulated Senegal.
"We will present what happened to the disciplinary committee in the Federation and await a response. There are many things that happened with us in the match. Our players were attacked.
“Mohamed Salah had the most share of the Senegalese fans' attack on him, which tried to intimidate the players as well, and we asked that the board of directors be on the bench of the match but they refused."
