“The manager came to talk to me,” Kouyaté remembers in a Palace TV interview. “He said: ‘I don’t want you playing in this game because if you take a yellow card you’re going to be suspended for the next game.’
“I said: ‘No, no, I want to play.’ We played like five minutes, and I went into my first contact and the referee came in and gave me my yellow card. I am so angry with the referee, I’m going head to head with him.
“Sadio and [Idrissa] Gana [Gueye] came in and said: ‘Don’t do that, it’s okay, relax.’ I said: ‘No, it’s hard for me not to play the next game.’”
Kouyaté sweated on the sidelines as Senegal fought through, only to make a sensational goalscoring return in the quarter-finals. His wild celebrations were much to the amusement of his teammates.
“I was stressing,” he remembers. “I’m not playing [the round of 16]. I sit down, I get up, walking. But the team mentality was unbelievable.
“The feeling [of scoring in the quarters] – I can’t explain this. Scoring for my country is the best thing.
“After, I spoke to Sadio Mané. I said: ‘Wow, Sadio, that is the feeling you have after scoring at the Africa Cup of Nations?’ Sadio Mané said: ‘You see, defenders and midfielders: football is not for you!’
“He said football is for the strikers…”
You can watch the full interview with Cheikhou Kouyaté above, or on Palace TV by clicking HERE.
