Even though there’s still a dark cloud hanging over Bafana Bafana courtesy of the Teboho Mokoena blooper when the Mamelodi Sundowns star was fielded against Lesotho despite being ineligible to play in the 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifier, there’s still hope and enough points for SA to book their ticket to the US, Canada and Mexico.
The American nations will co-host the biggest single-sport event by any stretch of imagination.
On Friday, Bafana proved to be not such good hosts when they walloped poor Lesotho, who had opted to play their home game within the borders of Mzansi.
The South Africans did not care whether Lesotho’s national stadium was in shambles or did not meet Fifa’s World Cup standards, coach Hugo Broos’ young guns went for the gonads and pulverised the lads from the Mountain Kingdom with a right royal spanking.
It was as if Bafana were taking out revenge on Lesotho, who are reported to have lodged a protest with regards to Safa’s Mokoena bungling to Fifa after taking pressure from sore losers Nigeria and Benin, who are in the same group. Benin and Nigeria were up in arms over Fifa’s deafening silence regarding the outcome of the matter.
Watching the avalanche of goals was more like a case of SA saying “we lend you our stadiums, hotels and training facilities and yet you are quick to jump into bed with our arch-rivals Nigeria”.
If Fifa were to dock SA points and give them to Lesotho, it will have no significance to Likwena’s cause and campaign, but will only boost the Super Eagles, who have thus far proved to be nothing but “Super Hatchlings” on the field of play in these qualifiers.
Before Friday’s fixtures, they were only able to register one victory in six months – and now they wanted boardroom favours to change their fortunes.
To rewind a little bit, Bafana, who have seemingly admitted their mistake, erroneously fielded Mokoena in a 2-0 home win over Lesotho when he should have sat out the qualifier after receiving two cautions in previous fixtures in Group C.
Fair is fair and rules are meant to be respected – and in this instance, the lawbook favours Lesotho.
The rules state: “If a person receives a caution in two separate matches of the same Fifa competition, they are automatically suspended from the next match in that competition.
“If a team fields a player who is not eligible to participate (due to suspension, registration issues, nationality, et cetera), the match is automatically forfeited. The default result is a 3–0 loss, unless the actual result was even more disadvantageous to the offending team.”
Well, it does not matter anymore, Nigeria are next on the menu and Broos’ soldiers must restage the apocalypse on the West Africans in Bloemfontein. We hope that they get the kind of beating that will make them regret urging Lesotho to lodge the protest.
A win will surely get South Africans more interested in the dollar-to-rand exchange rate as they start to budget for tickets, accommodation and flights to the land of that irrepressible meathead called Donald Trump for the tournament next year.
