The Egyptian FA has gone to the extent of lodging a complain with FIFA in an attempt to get the French match officials kicked out of the tournament.
"The referee was really unfair," an enraged Zico said afterwards.
"The injustice was clear.
It is clear that this tournament has been fixed."
I am not going to watch another match in this tournament."
However, for their beaten opponents, there has been an outpouring of a very different kind of emotion, with the agonising defeat prompting an ugly backlash from both players and coaching staff, including accusations of favouritism and match fixing. The Egyptian FA has gone to the extent of lodging a complain with FIFA in an attempt to get the French match officials kicked out of the tournament.
The African nation believed Zico's first goal at 1-0 was wrongly disallowed for a foul on Lisandro Martinez at the other end of the pitch, and they were incensed that they weren't awarded a penalty when Mohamed Salah went down in the box just seconds before Fernandez headed home the winner from Lautaro Martinez's cross.
"The referee was really unfair," an enraged Zico said afterwards. "The injustice was clear. There's been an unfairness right from the start of the match. It is clear that this tournament has been fixed."
Egypt's manager Hossam Hassan doubled down on that stance. "It's all about money. They want Messi to stay in the tournament," he said. "In football, many things happen off the pitch because of interests. What happened was unfair. Egypt deserved to qualify. We were the better team.
"Why isn’t there any fairness in sport? I do not want to try to put it nicely here with beautiful wording. We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice. It is my own way of speaking up and standing up. I am not going to watch another match in this tournament."
