After guiding Teranga Lions to the Total Africa Cup of Nations 2019 final, Senegal coach, Aliou Cisse expressed his happiness after seeing his boys returning to the most prestigious game in African football, 17 years after he and his teammates achieved that in 2002.
Senegal needed an own goal in extra-time to defeat Tunisia 1-0 at the Cairo based 30 June Stadium on Sunday night to set a date against Algeria next Friday (19 July 2019) with the trophy at stake.
Cisse was Senegal’s captain when they reached AFCON final for the first time in their history in 2002 (Mali), before falling short on penalties to Cameroon.
As coach, he hopes he can go one step further and lead his comrades to win the Holy Grail of African football.
After the tense game against Tunisia, that saw each side missing a penalty in regular time, and Tunisia having another penalty ruled down using VAR, Cisse spoke to CAFOnline.com.
“I feel very proud”, the ex- Teranga Lions captain said. “We haven’t reached the final since 17 years. This is the fruit of a long time preparation. Those players worked hard for five full years and now we get the fruit of this hard work”.