Senegal - AFCON 2025: First major challenge for Pape Thiaw

He was an elegant player, driven by a rare reading of the game and an early goal instinct. This offensive sensitivity never disappeared. She simply moved around. After hanging up the boots, Thiaw transposed his vision of attack and movement into coaching. His career truly changes on February 4, 2023, when he leads the local team of Senegal to victory at CHAN 2022, by defeating Algeria in a penalty shoot-out. The success is historic, the message is clear. Thiaw is not an aspiring assistant, but a coach capable of building a project.

Elected best coach of the tournament, he immediately joined the staff of Aliou Cissé, a symbol of an assumed continuity. On December 13, 2024, he officially takes charge of the Senegalese selection with a dual mission: to maintain Senegal among the great powers of the continent and to propose a daring football.

A resolutely offensive, demanding and modern style
Pape Thiaw does not hide his footballistic identity. His Senegal attacks, presses, and advances. His approach is based on a clear proposition: impose the game rather than endure it. The former striker structures his philosophy around a high pressing aimed at quickly recovering the ball and multiplying offensive situations. He prefers systems such as 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, offering constant width, speed, and projections. His instruction is crystal clear. 

"I play offensively and after every ball loss, you have to go to recovery" he describes himself. This requirement allows Senegal to stifle the opponent, accelerate the tempo and transform the transition into an opportunity. Against Malawi, in a convincing 4-0 victory, many hail "a coach who triumphs with his ideas", confirming the relevance of a scheme where defensive rigor and offensive liberation complement rather than oppose each other. Thiaw thus positions himself as one of the faces of a new generation of African coaches who position themselves as demanding, modern, assertive.

A first AFCON at the head of the Lions
Deputy to Aliou Cissé during the 2023 edition, Pape Thiaw enters this year into a new dimension. He will lead Senegal for the first time at an AFCON as main coach. His record so far plays in his favor: 14 matches, 11 wins, 2 draws and only one defeat, conceded against Brazil during a high intensity friendly match that served as a revelation as well as a test.

For this edition in Morocco, Senegal advances by assuming its status of favorite in the Group D, alongside Botswana, the DR Congo and Benin. A group within his reach, but that Thiaw approaches with caution the ambitious. Maintaining one’s status requires a flawless journey, and the competition has often proven that it does not forgive either insufficiency nor complacency.

Continuity, ambition yet pressured
Pape Thiaw inherits a team that has tasted recent success and aspires to make it a habit. Champion of Africa in 2022, finalist in 2019, Senegal has established itself as a reference. But on a rapidly renewed continent, where the elite is shrinking and organizing itself, success is a fragile reality. The former striker embodies a form of continuity. But it also embodies a break, that of a more offensive, more frontal, more assumed approach. He intends to perpetuate domination, but with his own signature.

A challenge to enter into history
As a player, he was part of the team that upset African and global certainties in 2002. As a coach, he has already won a continental title by leading the local team. Quite simply, repeat the same feats as his predecessor, Aliou Cissé, who at least has a similar background. 
A few days before his first AFCON as coach, a new chapter opens. An opportunity to prove, to confirm, to make his mark. For Pape Thiaw, Morocco is not a baptism, it is a confirmation. That a former striker, now a strategist, can transform an offensive ambition into a national heritage.