SA's World Cup group 'not that tough'

Bafana Bafana mentor Hugo Broos reckons their 2026 World Cup qualifiers group is “not the most difficult”.

Bafana are pitted against traditional foes Nigeria, Benin, Rwanda and two of their neighbours in Zimbabwe and Lesotho in Group C of the CAF qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup to be co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.

As much as he perceives the pool to be not that tough, Broos expects Nigeria to give Bafana a run for their money, also anticipating that Zimbabwe and Lesotho will be eager to prove a point against SA as neighbours. The qualifiers will start in November this year and conclude in November 2025.

“When you look at our group, I think we are not in a really most difficult group. At the same time, there’ll be some tricky games. First of all, Nigeria is a very good team who’ve always qualified for Afcon, so it will be tough games against them. Our neighbours Zimbabwe and Lesotho will be very, very motivated to beat SA.”'

The Bafana tactician gave a sense Benin and Rwanda would not really trouble Bafana, warning the significance of winning away fixtures if they were to qualify for the global showpiece. 

“There are still two other teams in Benin and Rwanda, not the most difficult and not the best teams of Africa but away games are always tricky. I think it will be very important to not only win at home. Away games will decide who wins the group. We will have to go for the first place so that we don’t have to play in the play-offs again afterwards,” Broos stated.

Nine groups of six teams will play in a home-and-away round-robin matches. Group winners will then qualify for the World cup, while the four best group runners-up will be drawn into play-offs to determine the CAF representative at the inter-confederation play-offs.