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“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.
Senegal had also had a goal disallowed minutes earlier, while Mendy’s complaints to the Congolese referee, Jean-Jacques Ndala, about having his towel stolen by Ismael Saibari – a misdemeanour for which the Bayern Munich forward later apologised – and lasers being directed in his eyes from the crowd seemed to fall on deaf ears. Now the goalkeeper who won the Champions League with Chelsea in 2021 tried to maintain his focus as Real Madrid’s Brahim Díaz stood over the ball.
“I realised two steps before he shot … usually when a player does a Panenka they slow down for the last step, but I noticed he did it early,” says Mendy, who is widely regarded as one of the best African goalkeepers having played a central role in the most successful period in Senegal’s history. “I know his preferred side is on the right. But when I saw him slow down way before, I just stood up and managed to catch the ball.”
Four minutes into extra time, Pape Gueye’s goal meant Senegal and Mendy crowned African champions for the second time in four years. Or so it seemed. More than seven months after Morocco were awarded a 3-0 victory in March when the Confederation of African Football ruled Senegal had forfeited the final by leaving the pitch, a preliminary hearing for their appeal is finally set to be heard at the court of arbitration for sport in Switzerland next month.
“The only thing we have to remember is that the game went to the end. We went off the pitch but the game restarted,” Mendy said. “For me there is no issue because the final was completed – we were given the trophy and celebrated in our country. That was it. When you speak to me about the Afcon, I just simply tell you that: ‘Yes, we have won it twice.’ That’s nothing against the Moroccan people or anyone else. It’s just how we feel. I’m not a lawyer but it’s just common sense. You can’t change something that has already been decided.”
In the meantime, Mendy has added to his bulging trophy cabinet by winning a second successive Asian Champions League with Al-Ahli, faced World Cup heartache after sustaining a knee injury against Norway and, at the age of 34, announced his international retirement last week. Even a phone call from Senegal’s new manager, Patrick Vieira, could not persuade him to change his mind and potentially add to his 59 caps.
“He [Vieira] is a legend so to have the chance to work with him was really something that came into my mind,” Mendy says. “But at the end of the call I asked for some time to really think about everything. A couple of days later I called him and explained that I wanted to stick to my decision. I started thinking about it after the Afcon and I just came to the conclusion that it was my time to say stop.”
Mendy has high hopes that Senegal’s next generation, which includes Monaco’s Lamine Camara – the midfielder who almost joined Chelsea in the summer – and Aston Villa’s Ibrahim Mbaye can emulate the achievements of his. The Teranga Lions were crowned African champions for the first time in 2022, around eight months after Mendy kept a clean sheet in the 2021 Champions League final. But he says there is no comparison between the two when he looks back now. “[Winning Afcon] was the best moment of my football career: it was 10 times better [than the Champions League]. I can compare now because I’ve also won the Asian Champions League twice.
“To win for your club is something really incredible. But you cannot compare with winning for your country, especially when they have never won anything before. It happens only once in your life so being part of the team that made history was amazing.”
Mendy’s exploits in 2021 led to him being named best goalkeeper at Fifa’s now defunct The Best awards, but he missed out on the Yashin trophy awarded by the organisers of the Ballon d’Or to Gianluigi Donnarumma. Both have been nominated again for this year’s award and Mendy says he is proud to be in the conversation again after what he describes as “my best year since I became a professional” after a season in which no other goalkeeper won as many major honours.
He says: “To be nominated for the Yashin trophy while I play in Saudi Arabia means a lot to me. My journey has not been easy – everything is about working hard and being resilient. When I see goalkeepers in Senegal wearing the No 16 jersey it makes me so proud. It means that at some point I gave them some inspiration and this is very powerful.”
Mendy was born in Normandy, and started his professional career at Cherbourg but found himself unemployed for a year after enduring successive relegations. He was eventually given another chance by Marseille and is now helping to fund a school in his parents’ hometown of Keur Massar that has recently expanded to 200 students. Mendy is also behind a scheme that supports budding entrepreneurs in the country.
“There is so much talent in Senegal and we have a young population that is very dynamic. That’s why it’s important to give them the opportunity to have a better life,” he says. “When my mum sees the school she is so proud and that is the biggest gift anyone can have.”
