Bafana Bafana face a tough road to the final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, writes Mark Gleeson.
South Africa go in search of only their second ever Africa Cup of Nations title in Morocco this month but Bafana Bafana will have to get past some heavyweight opposition if they are to lift the trophy in Rabat next month.
Not least hosts Morocco, who have a star-studded squad and can count on vociferous home support, plus the likes of reigning champions Ivory Coast, Algeria, Egypt and Senegal, who were all impressively efficient in the recently concluded World Cup qualifying campaign.
It is also always dangerous to discount Cameroon, even if a little of the roar has gone out of the Indomitable Lions, as well as Nigeria, who have plenty of quality to pick from but struggle to find the right cohesion.
The beauty – or perhaps frustration for some – of a tournament like the Cup of Nations is that it is an intense four-week block in which one of any number of teams could peak, finding the right chemistry and confidence.
Rarely does form coming into the tournament, or even rankings, count for much. Morocco, for example, have been pre-tournament favourites for the past three editions now and each time bombed badly.
They will have an arduous burden of expectation on their shoulders, given not only how well they have done of late, how much further ahead on the FIFA rankings they are above the other African countries, and all the money that their government has poured into the tournament.
They might buckle underneath it, leaving the field open for another contender, including South Africa.
Bafana had a bright start to their Nations Cup history with home success in 1996 but that remains the high point of the national team’s history.
They were runners-up two years after that at the 1998 finals in Burkina Faso, and third in 2000 and at the last edition in the Ivory Coast, where the goalkeeping heroics of Ronwen Williams catapulted them to the semi-final, and eventually the bronze medal.
South Africa’s only previous ever appearances at Cup of Nations finals in the Arabic-speaking north was in Egypt in 2006 and again in 2019 and produced mixed results.
In 2006, amid turmoil over bonus payments the team coached by Ted Dumitru lost every game and failed to score a goal, while in 2019 they bumbled through the first round as one of the lucky losers and then had a flash of brilliance as Thembinkosi Lorch scored the only goal of the game in the round of 16 against Egypt and eliminated the hosts.
But they lost to Nigeria in the quarters.
There have been some stunning turnarounds in the tournament’s history but none more dramatic than the last edition two years ago when Ivory Coast suffered an embarrassing 4–0 loss to tiny Equatorial Guinea in the worst defeat that a host nation had ever suffered.
They had to wait a few agonising days before results in other groups went their way and they limped into the knockout stage as one of the best third placed finishes.
They fired their French coach as a result but then came a momentum shift and the Ivorians rode a tide of home support to go through and win the trophy.
It was arguably the most bizarre Cup of Nations to date but vivid evidence of the unpredictable nature of the tournament.
Since the number of finalists was increased to 24 in 2019, there have been a handful of shocks like Madagascar beating Nigeria in 2019 or the Comoros eliminating Ghana in 2021.
At the same tournament, tiny Gambia made it all the way to the quarter-finals.
There are no debutants this time round and the likes of Botswana, Comoros and Equatorial Guinea will be treated with much caution … even if they are lowly ranked.
The finals in Morocco will be in the throes of winter and the region can be cold over December and January. It was supposed to be played in mid-year but moved back six months because of the Club World Cup in the U.S. but the climatic conditions could ensure some top class and high tempo football.
