CAN 2025: Brahim Diaz harshly criticized by a former 'Bleu'

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·20 January 2026

CAN 2025: Brahim Diaz harshly criticized by a former 'Bleu'

Brahim Diaz/@RMC

Former French international Jérôme Rothen did not hold back in criticizing Morocco's Brahim Diaz after his failed panenka against Senegal in the final of the Africa Cup of Nations (CAN 2025).

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On his show Rothen s’enflamme, broadcast on RMC, the ex-Parisian didn't mince his words:

He can cry all he wants, but when you decide to take a penalty like that, at that moment, with all the pressure and everything it means... You had 70,000 Moroccans in the stadium, and that’s not even counting the millions watching the matchThey had waited 50 years for this. You knew that if you scored that penalty, it was over. Missing a penalty can happen—even to the greatest players—but like that, it's scandalous. Too bad for him, he didn't respect football. He wanted to humiliate the Senegalese. (…) When you take a penalty, a panenka, it's premeditated. (…) You want to humiliate them. (…) Taking the penalty like that, it’s just drawing attention to yourself. The way he took it was to humiliate and to say, "I made Morocco win."

The Madrid star attempted this audacious move at the very last second of the match, with Morocco having waited half a century for continental glory.