Good and bad news for Bafana ahead of qualifiers

WITH all the hype around the launch of the lucrative new Betway Premiership, there was good and bad news for Bafana Bafana.

In the past two seasons, the Premier Soccer League’s (PSL) Premiership kicked off over the first weekend of August This season, however, the Premiership only starts in mid-September, when a full round of fixtures will be played over a weekend (September 14-15).

For some time now, Bafana Bafana fans have experienced a regular feeling of gloom as the PSL’s fixtures continued until the eve of the official Fifa international breaks. As a result, players were often exhausted when reporting for national camp duty. Also, often many carried injuries sustained in recent matches. Several players were reduced to onlookers at training sessions, and worse could not participate in warm-up matches.

The good news is that this time there will not be Premiership fixtures ahead of Bafana’s opening match in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign. Bafana, with its 57 world ranking, will host Uganda (95) in a Group K fixture during the first week in September.

The bad news is that some national squad players may be short of match practice because there will be MTN8 fixtures during August. Over the next two weekends, eight teams will play in the one-legged quarter-final round. Over the two remaining weekends in August, the two-legged MTN8 semi-finals will be played.

This means that only four teams will play matches every weekend in August, without the bother of midweek matches, like last season when fixtures remained congested.

Likely, the bulk of the national squad will again be from the Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates clubs. Should these two clubs reach the semi-finals they will be match-fit for national team duty during the first week in September.

The remaining eight clubs will be marking time until mid-September. If players from these clubs were included in the national squad they would not have been playing competitively.

A few days after the Uganda match, Bafana, who have recently moved up two places in the latest Fifa World rankings, will travel to Juba for the next group qualifier against South Sudan (169). South Africa is the highest world-ranked team in their group and 11th in Africa.

Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos said teams in Africa are constantly changing, and he predicted “some interesting results” for the qualifiers. He said the key to a successful qualifying campaign was to win home matches at least. He hoped Bafana would “build consistency” while completing their Group K assignments.

Bafana will face Congo (118) in home and away matches in October. The qualifying round will be completed in November.

The two top finishers in each group will qualify for the tournament in Morocco, from December 21, 2025 to January 18, 2026.