Senegal
IraqThe red card at 13 minutes made the margin inevitable rather than the result. Even at eleven against eleven, Senegal's talent advantage over Iraq was significant enough to produce a comfortable victory; with a man up from the first quarter-hour, the 5-0 scoreline became a reasonable rather than exceptional reflection of the contest. Habib Diarra's early strike and the second-half barrage — three goals in 26 minutes — confirmed that Senegal's attack, when given the space and time a decimated opposition provides, is capable of the kind of output that might prove relevant in best-third-place calculations.
Senegal
Senegal answered every question they came into Matchday 3 carrying. Habib Diarra's opener inside four minutes settled the nerves and set the tone; the red card that followed nine minutes later removed any remaining structural uncertainty. But the Lions did not treat a numerical advantage as an excuse for complacency — Sarr, Gueye, and Ndiaye combined with genuine craft and clinical finishing in the second half to produce the biggest win by an African nation in World Cup history. Pape Gueye's brace and Ndiaye's late strike reflected a squad that had been waiting to score freely since their opening-day defeat, and on this evidence they finally obliged.
Iraq
Iraq's send-off was painful. Sulaka's red card in the 13th minute — a foul on Mané deemed to have denied an obvious scoring opportunity, confirmed by VAR — removed any realistic hope of organising a contest, and the Lions of the Tigris were then obliged to defend for 77 minutes against a Senegal side that had been waiting to exhale. Aymen Hussein's tournament-long absence left Iraq without a coherent attacking threat, and their best players were already operating on empty after a draining group stage. They exit without a point, but the red card here and the 1-4 margin against Norway tell a more nuanced story than the raw totals suggest.