ROAD TO BRAZIL
Battling Bafana begin 2014 campaign
SOUTH Africa begin their campaign to reach the 2014 World Cup in Brazil against Ethiopia today, defending a proud home record in qualification for the global showpiece.
Bafana Bafana have lost just two World Cup qualifiers in 18 home matches and both of those sides are near the peak of their powers.
The first was a 2-0 reversal at the hands of Ghana in Joburg in qualification for the 2006 event in Germany, with the Black Stars going on to reach the second round. They then went on to become the African heroes of the 2010 tournament.
Nigeria beat a battling Bafana Bafana 1-0 in Port Elizabeth in the qualifying tournament for the 2010 event that South Africa had entered, even though they automatically qualified for the World Cup as hosts.
In all, the country has played 36 World Cup qualification matches after being hurriedly placed in the preliminaries for the 1994 tournament in the US following their re-admission to international football.
They have won 22 of those, with nine defeats and five draws, missing out on two finals appearances 1994 and 2006.
– It all started disastrously with a 4-0 defeat at the hands of Nigeria in their first game in Lagos in October 1992, with the late Rashidi Yekini getting a brace.
Their first qualification victory came in the very next game when Phil Masinga scored the only goal of a 1-0 home win over Congo-Brazzaville.
They repeated that win in the Congo, but a 0-0 home draw with Nigeria meant they missed out on a place in the finals from the three-team pool.
The team entered the qualifiers for the 1998 World Cup in France as African champions, but were this
time run much closer by the Congolese.
It took a screamer from Masinga in their final home qualifier against the Central Africans to secure a 1-0 win and their place in France for a first-ever visit to the global showpiece.
Qualification for the 2002 finals in Japan and South Korea was comfortable enough, though early in the campaign the players faced the trauma of the National Stadium stampede in Harare when 13 fans lost their lives in a stampede after police fired teargas into the stands.
It left Bafana Bafana midfielder Delron Buckley, scorer of a brace that day, to swear he would never play in Zimbabwe again and it would be another 11 years before South Africa returned to the country for their friendly international last November.
South Africa failed to reach the 2006 finals under Stuart Baxter, with Ghana emerging as a powerhouse on the continent with the likes of Stephen Appiah, Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari and John Mensah in their side.
They were simply too good for Baxter’s side, and the same was the case for Nigeria in 2008, with Bafana having a poor campaign that resulted in just two wins from their six group matches, both those against Equatorial Guinea.
That campaign did result in their biggest qualification victory though, a 4-1 home success over the Guinea side in June 2008 as Kagisho Dikgacoi scored a brace and Surprise Moriri and Terror Fanteni netted the others.
Their last qualification game was almost four years ago when Siphiwe Tshabalala scored in a 1-0 success in Equatorial Guinea in October 2008.