Liverpool’s Sadio Mane missed the decisive spot kick as Cameroon beat Senegal 5-4 on penalties to reach the Africa Cup of Nations semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Mane, Africa’s most expensive player, was denied by Fabrice Ondoa, Vincent Aboubakar hitting the winning penalty.<\/p>\n
Much fancied Senegal had a great chance to win it in normal time but Moussa Sow volleyed wide from close range to leave the game scoreless after 120 minutes.<\/p>\n
Cameroon are four-time winners of the tournament.<\/p>\n
The result means Mane is likely to make a swift return to his club Liverpool, who suffered a surprising 2-1 home defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderersin the FA Cup fourth round on Saturday.<\/p>\n
There were striking similarities to this game and 15 years ago, when Cameroon and Senegal met in the 2002 final in Mali.<\/p>\n
On that occasion, Cameroon beat Senegal 3-2 on penalties after a goalless 120 minutes.<\/p>\n
Senegal were made to pay for missing a number of chances in both normal time and extra time.<\/p>\n
West Ham’s Cheikhou Kouyate headed an early chance over the bar while Stoke City’s Mame Biram Diouf was close with a lob from inside the area.<\/p>\n
Cameroon, who will now face the Democratic Republic of Congo or Ghana on Thursday for a place in the final, failed to register a noteworthy shot in the opening hour.<\/p>\n
Their first serious attempt on target came in the 65th minute when Robert Ndip Tambe volleyed straight at Abdoulaye Diallo before the Senegal keeper produced a low one-handed save to keep out Benjamin Moukandjo.<\/p>\n
Diallo was responsible for ensuring the tie went to penalties after a fine stop to keep out Jacques Zoua in extra time.<\/p>\n
In the shootout, there was nothing to choose between the two teams as the first eight penalties went to plan.<\/p>\n
At 4-4, Mane stepped forward but Ondoa saved his kick. That presented Aboubakar with a chance to seal victory and the Besiktas forward made no mistake.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liverpool’s Sadio Mane missed the decisive spot kick as Cameroon beat Senegal 5-4 on penalties to reach the Africa Cup of Nations semi-finals. Mane, Africa’s most expensive player, was denied by Fabrice Ondoa, Vincent Aboubakar hitting the winning penalty. Much fancied Senegal had a great chance to win it in normal time but Moussa Sow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[3082,278],"class_list":["post-289169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","tag-afcon2017","tag-cameroon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}