The video is crazy. Only a few minutes after Serbia’s victory (81-68) over Mali in the fourth group match of the Women’s World Cup, currently being held in Sydney, Serbian Sasa Cado quietly responds to the media in her country. The scene takes place in the mixed zone, the space through which the players pass after a match to express themselves to the press.
Suddenly, screams ring out. Sasa Cado turns around and sees… two players fighting. These are not two adversaries who fight it out for lack of having been able to do so on the ground a little earlier. But, well, two Malian teammates. The two belligerents are Salimatou Kourouma and Kamite Elisabeth Dabou. They even strike each other a few punches in the face. We do not know, at this stage, the reasons for their anger. Their teammates tried to separate them, but had to work together to achieve this.
A little later, Touty Gandega, the rear of Mali who played in Nantes last season, made a point of apologizing: “Well, I want to clarify that this is not the image we wanted to convey, really. not. God knows we get along well and there, it’s a skid that we would have unfortunately wanted to avoid! I know it’s crazy what happened, but the little ones are deeply sorry. We would like to apologize to the Malian people and the African people…”
We should perhaps look for the causes of this dispute in the poor course of the Africans drafted after the withdrawal of Nigeria due to a crisis of governance within its Federation. They lost their first four group matches: 89-56 against Japan, 85-58 against Australia, 74-59 against France and 81-68 against Serbia. Already eliminated, Mali will try to save the honor, this Tuesday, against Canada at 8 am.
