Group H: Advancing not in the cards for Senegal

Yerry Mina scored the winner as Colombia wrested first place in Group H.

SAMARA, RUSSIA— The “fair play” tiebreaker doesn’t seem all that fair to Senegal.

The last African team standing at the World Cup lost to Colombia 1-0 Thursday, leaving it even with Japan on record, goal differential, total goals and head-to-head. The next tiebreaker to determine who would move on as the secondplace team in the group — Colombia was first — was a new one: which team accumulated fewer yellow cards. Japan had four, Senegal had six.

Japan lost to Poland 1-0 in the other group match, which was played at the same time. When Japan realized that second place would come down to the yellow-card tiebreaker, the Japanese started stalling.

“I don’t know if the regulation is cruel or not, but I can’t ask my players to go on the pitch in order to avoid yellow cards,” coach Aliou Cisse said. “You have to be in contact with other players when you play football. This is how you play football. It worked against us.”

Yerry Mina scored the only goal. The 6-foot-5 Barcelona defender leapt above a pair of Senegalese defenders to head the ball hard off the ground, off Senegal goalkeeper Khadim Ndiaye’s hand and into the net, sending the enthusiastic Colombian fans at Samara Stadium into a frenzy.

Colombia, which reached the quarterfinals four years ago in Brazil, is the fourth South American team to advance, with only Peru getting eliminated. All five African teams failed to move on.

Colombia will face England on Tuesday in Moscow, while Japan goes on to face Belgium in Rostov-on-Don on Monday. Belgium defeated England 1-0 to decide their group in a late match Thursday night.

Japan and Senegal drew 2-2 in a back-and-forth match on Sunday. Japan beat Colombia 2-1 to begin the tournament, while Senegal beat Poland by the same score. If FIFA had not added the fair play tiebreaker for this World Cup, the two teams would have had to draw lots to determine which would advance.