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International Football AFCON Final Drama After this moment, Edouard Mendy saved Morocco forward Brahim Diaz's late penalty in dramatic circumstances in the Africa Cup of Nations final - and his Senegal side went on to win Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images Matt Pyzdrowski serves as a goalkeeping analyst for The Athletic. He is a coach and former goalkeeper who played professionally in the United States and Sweden. Penalties are often framed as moments of execution. Strike the ball cleanly, pick a corner, block out the noise. That framing, however, ignores a reality goalkeepers understand better than anyone else. Penalties are rarely really decided at the moment of contact. They are decided in the minutes, sometimes the seconds, before the ball is struck. Advertisement The incident between Senegal and Morocco late in normal time in the Africa Cup of Nations final on Sunday was an extreme example of that truth. It was chaotic, drawn-out and uncomfortable to watch. It was also a near-perfect case study in how a goalkeeper, aided by his team-mates, can manipulate time, routine and emotion to tilt a supposedly 75-per-cent-favourable situation for the shooter back toward parity. By the time Brahim Diaz stepped up to take his potential tournament-winning penalty for host nation Morocco, it no longer resembled the scenario players rehearse endlessly in training. The kick itself was almost incidental. What mattered was everything that had already happened. At their core, penalties are a battle for psychological control. The taker wants predictability: a familiar routine, a stable emotional state and a sense of ownership over the moment. The ’keeper wants the opposite. Disruption, uncertainty and doubt are the tools available to them. Some goalkeepers pursue control through stillness. They stand tall, say nothing and attempt to project inevitability. Others, most notably Emiliano Martinez of Aston Villa and world champions Argentina, take the opposite approach, leaning into confrontation, verbal provocation and overt gamesmanship. Both methods can be effective, but only when they align with the goalkeeper’s personality and emotional regulation. What Senegal’s Edouard Mendy demonstrated on Sunday was a third, less-discussed pathway to control, one rooted in the manipulation of time itself. Academic research has repeatedly shown that forcing penalty takers to wait longer to shoot than they would choose to increases the likelihood of a miss. The mechanism is simple: time invites thought, and thought invites doubt. The longer a player stands over the ball, the harder it becomes to execute a movement designed to be automatic. Advertisement In American football, this is known as icing the kicker and often involves calling a timeout. In football, where we can’t do that, it is usually subtler, but no less effective. In Rabat the other night, with the African title on the line, subtlety was abandoned entirely. From the moment the penalty was awarded, the match fractured. Senegal’s walk-off in protest created a delay of around 16 minutes before the kick was eventually taken. Sixteen minutes is an eternity in penalty terms. That interruption alone would have been enough to unsettle even the most experienced taker. But the hold-up did not end there. When play finally resumed, Mendy did not immediately take his place on the line. In fact, the restart itself was preceded by another flashpoint. As the players emerged from the tunnel, a confrontation unfolded near the penalty spot, with members of the two teams involved in a heated exchange. Bodies crowded the space and both sides attempted to assert control over the moment. The objectives were clear. Senegal were intent on ensuring the penalty was taken in anything but clean conditions, extending the disruption that had already defined the stoppage. Morocco, meanwhile, were focused on protecting their taker. Several players positioned themselves around Brahim, attempting to shield him physically and psychologically from further interference and to restore some sense of normality to the situation. It was within that contested space that the next tactic emerged. Scuffing up the penalty spot is one of football’s oldest dark arts. It is also one of the most effective, precisely because it appears so minor. In this case, it was neither accidental nor isolated. Amid the chaos, Mendy and his left-back, El Hadji Malick Diouf, took the opportunity to deliberately damage the turf, dragging their boots across the spot and roughing up the surface the ball would rest on in the moments before Brahim’s shot. This brought an intervention from the referee (Mendy would eventually be booked for his disruptive actions) — yet another pause in an already fragmented process. The ball had to be repositioned. The footing had to be reassessed. The moment had to be reset again. Mendy then compounded the disruption. While the spot was being addressed, he and Senegal captain Sadio Mane engaged Brahim verbally, lingering near the taker and offering pointed words no doubt designed to distract rather than assist. Just as Brahim appeared ready to finally begin his run-up, Mendy left his line once more to query something with the referee, dragging out the sequence even further. This time, the ref had seen enough. He ordered Mendy back into goal and delivered a final verbal warning, perhaps even reminding him he had already been yellow-carded, because of this further delaying of the kick. Advertisement That moment matters, because it highlights the fine line we goalkeepers walk in these moments. Disruption is tolerated, even expected, to a point. Push it too far, though, and it becomes sanctionable. But by then, the damage is often already done. Scuffing the spot disrupts more than mechanics. It disrupts cognition. The taker is forced to think about footing, ball-contact quality and balance, all at the exact moment they should be trusting muscle memory. Each additional stoppage reinforces uncertainty, chipping away at the automaticity required for a person to execute under pressure. It was against this backdrop that Mendy continued to delay even further. Rather than immediately retreating to his line as instructed, he lingered near the penalty area, adjusting items of his kit and surveying the scene. The effect was cumulative. Even after a prolonged interruption, the penalty still could not settle into a recognisable rhythm. The message to Brahim was unmistakable: this would not be a routine kick. Then, right before the kick, Mendy walked forward once more to Brahim and engaged him directly. Mane joined in once more, one would assume offering pointed advice that was anything but helpful, prompting another stoppage. Each interruption was marginal in isolation. Put together, they were suffocating. This is where penalty psychology becomes less about theatrics and more about pressure accumulation. The taker is forced to rehearse the kick repeatedly in their mind. Their chosen finish begins to feel less of a certainty. Alternative ideas creep in. Again, each action was marginal. A scuffed patch of turf. A few extra seconds burned. A word here, a pause there. But penalties are decided in margins. And by the time Brahim placed the ball down for the final time, those margins had been stretched to breaking point. Advertisement The spoken-word form of disruption at penalties has become more visible in recent years, largely due to Martinez’s success on the international stage with Argentina. Getting in the taker’s face, reminding them of the stakes and claiming knowledge of where they intend to place the shot are all designed to reframe the moment as a test they might fail. Mendy’s interaction with Brahim on Sunday followed the same logic, even if it was delivered with a different tone. This was not performative bravado. It was intimate, invasive and deliberate. By stepping forward and engaging Morocco’s taker directly, the Senegal goalkeeper violated the psychological bubble Brahim was trying to construct. Mane’s involvement shifted the dynamic again. What should have been a one-on-one duel became a collective confrontation. The taker was no longer facing a goalkeeper. He was facing a whole team. That distinction matters. Research into penalties consistently shows that perceived social pressure increases miss rates. The more isolated the taker feels, the greater the cognitive load. Senegal’s approach ensured Brahim felt anything but isolated, and not in a way that benefited him. One of the most underappreciated disruption techniques available to goalkeepers is simply refusing to be ready. This can take many forms: standing away from the line, tying your bootlaces, adjusting the gloves, taking a drink of water or asking the referee a question that does not need asking. The key here is not what the goalkeeper is doing, but what the penalty taker is being forced to do: wait. Mendy’s refusal to immediately set himself was not random. It was a deliberate extension of the chaos that had already defined the moment. Even after Brahim appeared ready to begin his run-up, he stepped forward again to query something with the referee, dragging the process out further. It was the final escalation, and a last reminder to the taker that this was no longer his moment to control. Advertisement From a psychological standpoint, this type of delay attacks the foundation of successful penalty-taking. Most of the game’s best at scoring from the spot rely on highly structured pre-shot routines to regulate arousal and narrow attentional focus. When those are repeatedly interrupted, players can revert to conscious control. And conscious control is the enemy of fluid execution. Once the taker finally begins their run-up, the goalkeeper’s remaining tools are limited. They are not, however, powerless. Visual distraction on the line, whether through dancing, waving arms or erratic movement, has a long and storied history. Bruce Grobbelaar’s spaghetti legs in Rome. His fellow Liverpool ’keeper Jerzy Dudek’s shimmy in Istanbul. Andrew Redmayne’s now iconic ‘Wiggles’ routine for Australia. According to sports psychologist Geir Jordet, the effectiveness of these behaviours lies not in movement itself, but in unpredictability. Linear pacing from left to right is easy to ignore. Erratic, non-patterned behaviour is not. Jordet’s research suggests that any form of goalkeeper distraction can reduce scoring probability by around 10 per cent. When combined with forced waiting, that reduction can exceed 20 per cent. These are not guarantees. Penalties remain high-variance events. But they are meaningful shifts in probability. Mendy did not dance on the line in the way Redmayne did, but the principle was the same. His movement was irregular. His positioning subtly changed. He jumped up and down and from side to side. His body language remained active rather than passive. Brahim was never allowed visual stillness. When Brahim eventually struck the ball, the decision he made told its own story. This was not a confident Panenka. It was not the audacious, almost arrogant chip Zinedine Zidane successfully produced for France in the 2006 World Cup final, an attempt taken through pressure rather than because of it. Brahim’s chip was hesitant and underpowered. It was a solution chosen late rather than committed to early. It carried all the hallmarks of over-analysis, a player attempting to out-think the moment rather than execute within it. After 16 minutes of waiting, repeated verbal confrontation, physical disruption, a scuffed spot and one final delay from the goalkeeper, opting for the Panenka becomes understandable. It feels like an escape from the binary choice of left or right. But escape strategies rarely produce conviction. Advertisement Mendy, for his part, did just enough. A slight shift to his right, patience through the chip and the ball was comfortably caught. The save itself was straightforward. The work had already been done. The ref blew moments later, sending the final into extra time, where Senegal scored the game’s only goal. It is important to stress that not every goalkeeper should attempt this approach. Just as you would not ask a ’keeper who struggles in the build-up to play the way Ederson does, you should not ask a naturally calm or introverted one to suddenly become confrontational in penalty situations. Forced behaviour creates internal conflict, and internal conflict is disastrous in high-pressure moments. The best exponents of disruption, including Martinez, Redmayne and Dudek, are not acting. They are amplifying who they already are. Mendy’s performance in Rabat at the weekend fits comfortably within that framework. This was not chaos for chaos’ sake. It was calculated, controlled and recoverable. Despite all the disruption, he remained composed at the moment of execution. That ability to transition seamlessly from psychological aggression to technical clarity is what separates effective gamesmanship from empty theatrics. Penalty analysis often fixates on outcomes: scored or missed, saved or not. Moments like the one on Sunday remind us that a goalkeeper’s influence is rarely confined to the frame of the goal. We operate in the margins: time delays, body language, spatial ownership and emotional manipulation. Much of their impact happens away from the ball, away from the cameras and away from traditional metrics. This is what makes goalkeeping the most human position in football. It demands technical skill, but also vulnerability, creativity and a willingness to step into discomfort. Advertisement That Senegal-Morocco penalty was messy. It tested the limits of gamesmanship. It will divide opinion. From a goalkeeping perspective, it was also a masterclass in disruption. And in a duel where the odds are stacked against you, disruption is often the most powerful weapon players at my position have. Matt Pyzdrowski is a coach and former goalkeeper who played in the United States and Sweden. He serves as a goalkeeping analyst for The Athletic. Follow Matt on Twitter @mattpyzdrowski