{"id":20526,"date":"2025-12-05T06:47:01","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T04:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/african-teams-to-discover-fifa-group-stage-opponents-on-friday\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:31:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:31:50","slug":"african-teams-to-discover-fifa-group-stage-opponents-on-friday","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/african-teams-to-discover-fifa-group-stage-opponents-on-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"African teams to discover FIFA group-stage opponents on Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"x_x_ms-outlook-mobile-body-separator-line\">\n<div data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">The ceremony, hosted at the Kennedy Center and marks the first major milestone in the final build-up to a World Cup that will span Canada, the US and Mexico between 11 June and 18 July 2026. For African teams, the draw represents more than just the unveiling of opponents.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"x_x_ms-outlook-mobile-signature\">\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It signals the first step in a campaign that many believe could be the continent&#8217;s most promising in decades, coming after Morocco&#8217;s historic semi-final run at Qatar 2022 the first by any African nation. Africa&#8217;s contingent is already confirmed: Morocco, Senegal, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, C\u00f4te d&#8217;Ivoire, Ghana, Cape Verde and South Africa all topped their qualifying groups and secured automatic places at the tournament.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20527,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-20526","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Africa's nine qualified nations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup will discover their group-stage opponents on Friday, as the draw for the expanded 48-team tournament takes place in Washington DC, in the United States (US)","published_date":"2025-12-05 00:00:00","news_description":"Africa's nine qualified nations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup will discover their group-stage opponents on Friday, as the draw for the expanded 48-team tournament takes place in Washington DC, in the United States (US)","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24531,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20526\/revisions\/24531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=20526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}