With a Fifa world ranking of 90 and the unwanted distinction of being the lowest ranked country to ever qualify for the World Cup, albeit as hosts, Bafana Bafana are possibly the worst side to ever take part in a World Cup.
To point this out is not to try and demoralise a nation, but merely to underline the uphill battle that South Africa — Bafana Bafana — face at the biggest soccer spectacle in the world. Bafana first qualified for the World Cup in 1998 and repeated the feat four years later in Korea/Japan, where they got their first win, but both times failed to negotiate past the group stages.
The past decade has seen the national team in decline since the highs of the 90s. They won the African Cup of Nations in 1996 and even managed to hold a World Cup and European championship-winning French team to a credible 0-0 draw at Soccer City in 2000, which was Carlos Queiroz’s first game in charge.
Bafana fans hope that 2010 will be the year the national team reverses its fortunes. Dreams that with the sea of green and gold, lots of noisy vuvuzelas and a packed Soccer City, anything can happen and maybe then they can defy all odds and qualify from Group A, a group including France, Uruguay and Mexico.
Since playing very well in last year’s Confederations Cup, they have struggled for goals ever since, drawing or losing matches to Iceland, Norway, Serbia, Germany and the like. Looking at the calibre of players available for the national team, one can understand why they have struggled in recent times. The only names recognised worldwide are Everton’s Steven Pienaar and West Ham’s Benni McCarthy, who hasn’t seen much game-time this season.
So far we can acknowledge that goals have been south Africa’s biggest problem, Katlego Mphela is by far the nation’s main goal threat but he has not hit the net since the turn of the new year, in the domestic league and for the national team. His other strike partners, McCarthy and Twente Enschede’s Bernard Parker, have struggled for game-time at their clubs. To stand a chance of progressing from Group A, every set piece available to them is going to be crucial to getting goals.
The team’s main focus and talisman is Pienaar, a two-footed playmaker who is a graduate of the famous Ajax Academy, first with Ajax Cape Town in South Africa and then Ajax Amsterdam in The Netherlands. He will be the fulcrum of South Africa’s attack in June-July. No matter how slim their chances are, Bafana will hope that coach Carlos Alberto Parreira can conjure up the right combination, tactics and with a sprinkle of some Samba magic, cause a shock or two.
Parreira has been around the football block for a while, one of the first coaches to lead four different nations (Kuwait — 1982, UAE — 1990, Brazil — 1994/2006 and Saudi Arabia — 1998) to the soccer World Cup and Bafana will be his fifth. His second coming hasn’t been the most fruitful but the nation hopes that magic can be weaved between now and June 11 when they face Mexico in the opening match.
They might rank as outsiders, but they might take a leaf from one of the biggest underdog stories of recent times — South Korea’s run to the semi-finals eight years ago. They didn’t have any stars, just a group of players put together from their domestic league or their neighbours, the Japanese league, with one or two players plying their trade in Europe. Many feared the Koreans, under Dutchman Guus Hiddink, would struggle to win a match, let alone escape the group, but they were to embark on a fairytale run that made the world stand up and take notice. They shocked big teams like Spain and Italy en route to finishing fourth in the world soccer showpiece, for now we can say that anything can happen.
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