Although it has been a challenging start to the Premier League season for West Ham United, there has been plenty to be proud of on a personal level for El Hadji Malick Diouf.
Joined only by Inter’s Federico Dimarco as the defender with the most assists in Europe’s top five leagues this season, Diouf is now preparing for two huge international fixtures that will determine whether Senegal will be at the 2026 FIFA World Cup finals.
Following a momentous win over teammate Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s DR Congo in September, qualification is within touching distance for Diouf and the Lions of Teranga. Unbeaten in their CAF qualifying group, victories against the two bottom sides, Mauritania and South Sudan in October would guarantee them a place at next year’s tournament.
“We have two finals for World Cup qualification,” he insisted. “So we are looking forward to achieving six points and going directly to the World Cup. I'm really young, and I know it’s a massive privilege to represent my country. I love the Senegalese people! They are beautiful, and in the national team we have a lot of good players in every position.
“We have a lot of players on the left side that can play very well, and we are in the top 18 [in the FIFA World Rankings] right now. We are a good team and a very good nation.
“It would mean everything [to qualify for the FIFA World Cup]. The captain, Kalidou Koulibaly, told us after we won against DR Congo that we have two finals left, so now we are looking forward to it.”
During this international break, Diouf will be looking to extend a remarkable personal record with Senegal. The left-back has won all six matches he has started since making his debut in AFCON qualifying against Burundi in September 2024.
In those six games, in which he has played every minute, including a 3-1 win over England at the City Ground, Senegal have scored 12 goals and conceded just three.
He continued: “This was the dream [to have the opportunity to represent Senegal at a FIFA World Cup], and I think now we have the ticket to go there. We have to pass these two games first. We have to fight in these two games. I don't know the way we are going to win, but we have to win both and continue our dream.
“We need this because we have a lot of players who have not played at the World Cup, and we’ve also got players who have also played at two, and this would be their third, so I think we are all looking forward to hopefully securing qualification.”
Should they succeed, it would mark only Senegal’s fourth appearance at a FIFA World Cup, but their third in succession. Diouf had not yet been born when the likes of the late former Hammer Papa Bouba Diop and Henri Camara captured the imagination of the African continent in Senegal’s famous 2002 campaign, when they defeated holders France on their way to the quarter-finals.
“A lot of people remember one of our most famous appearances at the World Cup in 2002,” he reminisced. “We had so many good players, like Henri Camara, Papa Bouba Diop and Salif Diao, who was the president at Galaxy Football Academy [where Diouf began his footballing career].
“I don’t remember too much about our World Cups, but I remember winning the Africa Cup of Nations in 2022, and it was crazy. I was crying a lot, and I remember I didn't eat dinner because I couldn’t stop crying!”
After the October international break, Senegal will have their sights firmly set on the Africa Cup of Nations, a competition which they will be competing in as favourites given their recent record.
Since 2017, the Lions of Teranga have won it once, in 2022, and have only been eliminated by the eventual champions in the other three editions (Cameroon in the 2017 quarter-final on penalties, Algeria in the 2019 final, and Ivory Coast in the 2024 quarter-final, also on penalties).
He said: “We’ve also got the AFCON in December, and we are also going to help our national team there.
“Even when you are young, you feel it in your heart, and that’s how much we love our country. In 2022, when we won, every old person and every young person was crying, and it was the best moment in our country, but I think we can achieve this feeling again. It is our dream to make it. I think we are on our way to doing that, so I just think about that.
“The prospect of people starting to talk to you about what you did for your country is something that inspires me a lot, so now we have to take our chance.”
