{"id":20692,"date":"2025-12-08T14:07:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/bafana-face-tough-world-cup-start-after-draw-places-them-against-hosts-mexico-coach\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:31:57","slug":"bafana-face-tough-world-cup-start-after-draw-places-them-against-hosts-mexico-coach","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/bafana-face-tough-world-cup-start-after-draw-places-them-against-hosts-mexico-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Bafana face tough World Cup start after draw places them against hosts Mexico: Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s head Coach Hugo Broos says Bafana\u00a0Bafana\u00a0must brace for one of the toughest possible starts to the 2026 FIFA World Cup after being drawn to face co-hosts Mexico at the iconic Azteca Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>Bafana Bafana have been placed in Group A alongside Mexico, South Korea and the winner of the UEFA playoff involving North Macedonia, Czech Republic, Denmark and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>The draw hands \u00a0Bafana\u00a0\u00a0Bafana\u00a0a mixed assignment, an intimidating opener in one of world football\u2019s most challenging venues, followed by fixtures that offer both opportunity and risk.<\/p>\n<p>Broos says, &#8220;It\u2019s not an easy one. First of all, we have to play the first game of the tournament against Mexico, a home game for Mexico, so it will be very tough for us. Secondly, we have South Korea. From that point I was happy with Mexico and South Korea, and I hoped the last one would be something else than what we have now. Probably we will have Denmark in our group. Mexico and Denmark, two very strong teams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13895,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-20692","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Bafana Bafana have been placed in Group A alongside Mexico.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Bafana Bafana have been placed in Group A alongside Mexico.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20692","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\/20692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24641,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20692\/revisions\/24641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=20692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}