I went back to listen. Multiple Arabic-language broadcasts of the final. Egyptian, Moroccan, Algerian, beIN Sports MENA. Five different commentaries, five different versions of the same fifteen minutes.
What I found was a register the European press cannot access and largely does not know exists.
The Arabic commentary of the disallowed Senegalese goal varied across broadcasters. The Egyptian commentator described the foul with a single word and a hand-gesture audible in his voice. The Moroccan commentator was emphatic that the decision was correct. The Algerian commentator was conspicuously neutral, almost forensic. Each version reflected the broadcaster's relationship to the politics underneath the football.
The walk-off was where the Arabic commentaries diverged most sharply. The Egyptian broadcast filled the silence with poetry about football's relationship to dignity, in language that no European broadcast would have permitted itself. The Moroccan broadcast went almost silent for two minutes, which is a more eloquent commentary than anything that could have been said. The Algerian commentary cut to studio analysis that was openly sympathetic to the Senegalese position.
The Panenka miss produced something I have not heard before in football commentary. The Moroccan commentator's voice cracked. The Egyptian commentator laughed without humor. The Algerian commentator said the word "subhanallah" before catching himself. The Pape Gueye goal in extra time was received with a kind of stunned silence in the Moroccan broadcast that lasted longer than any silence I have heard in a live football call.
None of this travelled to the European audience. The English-language broadcast described what was happening in declarative sentences. The French-language broadcast was more emotional but stayed within recognizable bounds. The Arabic broadcasts were doing something different. They were processing the event aesthetically as it happened. The football was the occasion. The commentary was the artefact.
If you want to understand what the AFCON final meant in the region, do not read the post-match analysis. Listen to the broadcasts. They will tell you everything.