What actually happened at the final whistle? It's hard to say for sure at the moment. But according to the Moroccan manager, Walid Regragui, the Congolese captain had confronted him during the course of the match. And he had come forward at the end of the game to let him know, before things escalated.

"Before I went to shake his hand, he confronted me and my assistant on the sidelines before the end of the match; he spoke to us in a bad way. And Desabre knows it. And at the end, despite that, I went to shake his hand to also say: 'But why do you talk to me like this?' And then he looks away, like 'I'm not shaking your hand.' I held onto his hand, you can see it in the images, and he started to yell all over the place.

But in the images, one can clearly see a stern-faced Walid approaching Mbemba while he was praying at the end of the match. He clearly interrupts him to shake his hand and adds a hug. Clearly dissatisfied, the Moroccan coach demands that Chancel Mbemba look him in the eyes. But here again, everything is fine. What triggers the anger of the Marseille player is the retention of his hand by the Moroccan manager with a strong gesture, slyly scraping his thumb apparently to hurt him. That's what gets Chancel Mbemba out of his wits, demanding that he let go. And when Walid Regragui tries to play innocent, Mbemba makes a wrist gesture to signify to the other participants that he was held in a constraining way. Sabin Machini, president of the Congolese delegation in Ivory Coast, provided similar explanations on TV5 Monde.

Genesis of the tension…

In the very end of stoppage time, Mbemba stretches out his right calf - a sign of a possible cramp. The medics and stretcher quickly enter the field, and the referee signals for the player to leave the pitch, which the central defender did not like at all, as he did not seem to be calling for medical intervention. Furious, he confronts the match referee, Peter Waweru, and receives a yellow card.

He left the pitch and asked to return according to the rules. While he is on the sidelines, Regragui seems to say something to him that riles up the Marseille player even more. A few seconds later, the player returns to the field before the referee blows the end of the match.

According to Walid Regragui, Chancel Mbemba accuses him of calling him an idiot. "I told him: 'You're showing off!' And he tells me: 'You called me an idiot!'. There's no problem that he heard that, even if I never said it, but talking the way he did, he implies that my words are racist, which is dishonest. Since he only talks about religion in his discourse, he should be a bit honest with himself," explained the semi-finalist of the last World Cup. This clash will trigger a flurry of racist insults on the Congolese international's Instagram account, leading to support from the Democratic Republic of the Congo but also from some Guinean players.

Dido Nsapu