One of the most exciting cultural experiences we’ve had since getting back to Senegal was being here during the African Cup of Nations football (soccer) tournament. This is a biennial international tournament for Africa that dates back to 1957. Over the last 60 years, Senegal has won this tournament just once, which was in 2022.
The tournament structure is very similar to the World Cup, with group play followed by a single elimination tournament for the top teams from each group. Senegal played very well and made it to the finals against the tournament favorite and host country, Morocco, where they won in very dramatic and controversial fashion in extra time.
It is hard to describe what the atmosphere was like here in Senegal, because there really isn’t a good comparison to the States. In the U.S. there are a lot of different sports that are very popular and each sport has their own professional league, and several of these sports are very popular to follow on the collegiate level as well. For me I enjoy watching American football and basketball the most and specifically I am a fan of the Detroit Lions and the University of Michigan.
In Senegal, however, soccer is far and above the most popular sport and no other sport comes close. There isn’t a professional league here either so the big games are always international matches when Senegal goes up against other countries. All of this results in there being incredibly strong support for the national soccer team and a lot of pride tied up in how the team performs. Accordingly, the professional soccer players are arguably the biggest celebrities here as well. Leading up to the championship game tons of Senegalese flags and banners went up across the city and walls, telephone poles, piles of tires, etc. were painted green, yellow and red.
The championship game was on a Sunday night and finished around 10pm. Selina and I went on our roof to watch as streams of people (including tons of women and children) ran around the streets of our neighborhood yelling, blowing horns and lighting off fireworks. Within an hour the president of Senegal had declared the following day a national holiday. The celebrating continued long into the night across Dakar and across the country. I saw many of my students posting on WhatsApp about how they had never been so proud to be Senegalese.
Two days later the team returned to Senegal and paraded into town on top of a tour bus. I taught a class at Engage that morning and left in the early afternoon to return home. I had to cross the parade path and thought the team had already gone by, but this wasn’t the case. Once I realized I was caught in the parade traffic I decided to park my car and get out to watch the team go by. This ended up being a crazy experience! I’ve never been so tightly packed into a group of people. I’ve read about crowd crushes before (occurs when dense, overcrowded, and unmanaged crowds surge in one direction or become severely compressed, causing asphyxiation), but never really understood how they could be possible. I definitely understand now!
The only other time Senegal has won this tournament was during the year we were in France before moving to Senegal, so we just missed out. I am really glad that we were in Senegal this time to be able to experience the crazy firsthand! See below for pictures and videos of the celebrations in the streets and the parade.
-Adam
