Senegal went to the World Cup with a gynaecologist as their team doctor. That's the claim from federation president Abdoulaye Fall — and it explains a lot about how badly the whole campaign fell apart.
Fall told a press conference that the squad's medical support was wholly inadequate, that players were unsettled by it, and that the federation had to scramble to bring in additional expertise just to keep the changing room calm. "Health comes before everything," he said. Hard to argue with that. Harder still to explain why nobody caught this before the tournament started.
The doctor hits back
The accused, Dr. Abderahmane Fediore, isn't taking it quietly. The Senegalese Association of Sports Medicine has come out swinging, calling Fall's claims "unfounded and defamatory." They say Fediore holds a specialist diploma in sports medicine and sports biology, ran the physiotherapy department at Fann Hospital, and has served as Senegal's team doctor since 2017 — through three World Cups and five Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.
That's a credible CV. Which raises an uncomfortable question: is Fall looking for a scapegoat after a tournament that went spectacularly wrong?
Because the results were genuinely bad. Senegal arrived in North America as AFCON champions after beating Morocco in January's final. They were supposed to be contenders. Instead, they lost their opening two group games to France and Norway, then found a way to make it worse — leading Belgium 2-0 with five minutes left in the last 32, only to concede three times and go out in extra time.
A squad in freefall
Coach Pape Bouna Thiaw was sacked on Saturday. Now the medical staff is being publicly questioned. The internal picture being painted here is of a squad that was unsettled, unsupported, and ultimately underperforming at every level.
For anyone who had Senegal deep in the knockout rounds — and plenty did, given the AFCON form — this post-mortem makes grim reading. The dysfunction clearly predates the Belgium collapse. It may have contributed to it.
The federation says the players "were not sufficiently reassured." That's a damning summary of a World Cup campaign from the people who ran it.
