One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Can the 1970s West Germany model work for South Africa’s post-2010 generation?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group A preview. You can also read previews of Mexico, Czechia, and South Korea.
Can the 1970s West Germany model work for South Africa’s post-2010 generation?
If the 2026 World Cup’s extortionate prices, intentionally opaque ticketing process, and general lack of accessibility for average fans seem to be a cautionary tale for what happens when the tournament is hosted by a rich country, the legacy of the 2010 tournament in South Africa may be a cautionary tale for what happens when a country is forced to spend beyond its resources to host.
South Africa spent $6 billion to build six new stadiums and fund moderate-to-substantial upgrades for a further four. The tournament was a success, all things considered: Despite being the first host nation to be eliminated in the group stage, the hosts performed well across three games, and the actual hosting of the tournament went off without significant incident.
And then South African soccer entered into a decade-long tailspin.
In the 16 years since hosting the World Cup, South Africa failed to qualify for three consecutive tournaments. They didn’t fare much better at the continental level, failing to qualify for three Africa Cup of Nations finals, and only getting out of the group stage twice.
The good news is that South Africa have somewhat recovered. They made it to the semifinals at AFCON in 2023 for the first time since a great run in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and followed that up by qualifying for a World Cup without hosting for the first time since 2002.
There’s an interesting parallel between how the current iteration of South Africa is built and some of the great European teams of the late 20th century. Just like the great West Germany squads of the 1970s used to just be Bayern Munich wearing white shirts instead of red shirts, they have a strong core of guys who play together for an incredibly dominant domestic team.
If you only know one thing about club soccer in South Africa, it’s probably that league is dominated by the two big Johannesburg teams: Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs.
Except for that one thing is actually wrong, because the league is in fact dominated by Pretoria’s Mamelodi Sundowns, who have been champions 10 times since the 2014 season and have won eight straight titles dating back to 2018.1Mamelodi Sundowns are nicknamed the Bafana ba Style, which translates to “The Stylish Guys,” which rules.
And the core of that Sundowns team has in turn become the core of the reborn South Africa: On their most recent roster, every single player with a formal leadership role was also a Bafana ba Style, including captain and goalkeeper Ronwen Williams.
The biggest variable in international soccer is that teams just don’t play together that much, making it somewhere between hard and impossible to develop any of the tactical mechanisms that define modern club teams like cohesive pressing schemes or passing patterns or even the more alchemical parts of team sports like team chemistry.
South Africa, on the other hand, have a core of players who have been winning games together for over a decade. It helped them qualify for the World Cup at the expense of a Nigeria team that was loaded with Champions League talent but poorly coached and desperately uncohesive.
Having reestablished themselves as a competitive team in Africa, can South Africa compete on the World Stage?
They certainly have an opportunity: They are probably the fourth-best team in the group in terms of globally recognized talent, but they were legitimately good in qualifying — they only finished one point ahead of Nigeria, but that’s in part because a 2-0 victory over Lesotho was reclassified as 0-3 loss after FIFA remembered that Teboho Mokoena was supposed to be suspended for that game.2Seems like someone should have double-checked this beforehand? Mokoena is also yet another key Bafana Bafana player who plays for Mamelodi Sundowns.
With an established core, and a path to the knockout stage via third place open to them, maybe this time will be for (South) Africa.3Another weird 2010 World Cup legacy thing: At the time there was at least some discourse around “Waka Waka” and whether or not it was offensive for the official song of the first African World Cup to be written and performed by a white South American woman, but now it is more or less universally liked as a fun football tune. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, I suppose.
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