{"id":50711,"date":"2026-11-11T19:27:29","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T17:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=50711"},"modified":"2026-11-11T19:27:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T17:27:29","slug":"ellis-names-an-experienced-banyana-banyana-squad-for-world-cup-play-offs","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/ellis-names-an-experienced-banyana-banyana-squad-for-world-cup-play-offs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellis names an experienced Banyana Banyana squad for world cup play-offs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Coach Desiree Ellis has announced a strong Banyana Banyana squad for the FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup Intercontinental play-offs that kick off later this month.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>She is counting on the experienced players in her team to see them through to the next phase of the play-offs.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Wendy Shongwe, who played in the World Cup in Australia, has returned to the team and is the only player who was not in the WAFCON squad in July and August.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Banyana Banyana failed to qualify outright for next year\u2019s tournament in Brazil when they participated in this year\u2019s Women\u2019s AFCON in Morocco.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The team is scheduled to play Chinese Taipei on the 28th of this month, before facing Ecuador on the December 1 and Uzbekistan on December 5.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Ellis says, \u201cFIFA has said it\u2019s 23 only, which makes it very difficult. You are also looking for multi-functional players that can play more than one position to make sure that you have all your bases covered because the squad is much smaller than what you worked with before, for example at WAFCON where we could take 26. The biggest shock for me is that players still don\u2019t have passports; if they do, they\u2019re not valid. We spoke about this passport issue a long time ago. And because of such reasons, we couldn\u2019t have a look at certain players, especially exams, injuries. It\u2019s challenging to select a squad when you have players who are omitted because of all these reasons.\u201d<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":44159,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-50711","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Banyana Banyana failed to qualify outright for next year\u2019s tournament in Brazil when they participated in this year\u2019s Women\u2019s AFCON in Morocco.","published_date":"","news_description":"Banyana Banyana failed to qualify outright for next year\u2019s tournament in Brazil when they participated in this year\u2019s Women\u2019s AFCON in Morocco.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50711","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":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50713,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50711\/revisions\/50713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=50711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}