The hangover from Friday’s Africa Cup of Nations defeat still feels raw in the Senegalese capital.
Residents on Saturday morning woke up to the inescapable reality of defeat a few hours after their national team, the Teranga Lions succumbed to a 1-nil loss to Algeria in the final of the 32nd edition of Africa’s foremost football showpiece in Cairo Egypt.
A sombre calm reigns over several neighborhoods, a sharp contrast to the excitement that prevailed in the build-up to the game.
The pre-match atmosphere was characterised by singing and dancing to the sounds of trumpets and vuvuzelas.
The latter was popularized by South African fans.
The instrument was among the many that made brisk business throughout the triumphant march of the Lions to the final of the tournament.
However, since the defeat, a sign of cruel disillusionment had replaced this revelry, with thousands of the country’s flags disappearing from the streets where they were draped everywhere before and during the final.
Only a few remain, some of them curiously at half-mast.
Electric poles, tires, water bottles and oil drums still painted in the national colors are a silent reminder of the confidence with which Senegalese football fans had viewed the final before kickoff.
On the arteries, the number of cars draped in the red, yellow, green tricolour have been few and far between while joggers, warming up on the sidewalks, have swapped Sadio Mane shirts for track and field suits.
Most of them seemed to have returned to their old ways of appearing with the jerseys of the major European football teams or the NBA.
However, the people in Dakar look determined to overcome their disappointment, desperate to put the defeat of the Lions behind them.
The players are not being blamed for the underwhelming performance.
A supporter like Mamadou Hady Diallo, who manages a shop in Ngor in the western district of Dakar, accused the Algerians of deliberately interrupting the flow of the game.
“Today, I understood the adage that a final is not played, it is won. Senegal played the whole game but the Algerians won” he said with a pouted air.
He rued the North Africans approach to the game, saying they spent 90 minutes “spoiling the enterprising play by the Senegalese players.”
One of Hady Diallo’s customers blamed the leniency of the Cameroonian referee in the face of the aggressiveness of the Algerian players.
“They should have had at least a red card given the number of fouls they committed” he maintained.
Khady Mbengue, a supporter who was still wearing a jersey of the national team was more philosophical over the defeat, warning against any resentment towards Sadio Mané and his teammates.
“Some Senegalese think that the national team must always win… it cannot happen every day and people have to understand this” she told a few friends who were analyzing the highs and lows of the match from the Lions perspective.
They were still standing near the fan zone of the Ngor roundabout from where a giant screen for the public viewing of AFCON matches had disappeared overnight as organisers go through the cheerless motion of packing thousands of plastic chairs used for the occasion.
CAT/g/as/APA