Cameroon’s victorious players were still dancing on the field at the Stade de l’Amitié in Libreville, Gabon, when Issa Hayatou — African soccer’s apparently unassailable kingpin — decided he deserved a moment of triumph, too.
He was present, at the final of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations, to hand out medals to the winners and to offer a consoling hand to the losers. It was a role he had come to know well over the course of the 29 years he had spent as president of the Confederation of African Football, African soccer’s governing body.
That did not stop him from breaking just a little with protocol.