South Africa’s women’s team will continue their bid for a third successive World Cup appearance when they participate in the first playoff qualifying tournament in Morocco next month.
FIFA on Tuesday announced the dates and venues for the mini-tournament which will whittle down six teams to two,who will then go onto a final qualifying playoff in February next year.
Banyana Banyana will take on Chinese Taipei, otherwise known as Taiwan, in Rabat on Saturday, 28 November and Ecuador on Tuesday, 1 December.
Their last match is against Uzbekistan on Saturday, 5 December.
All the games take place at the Mohammed VI Football Complex in Rabat during the international window.
Ghana and Papua New Guinea are the other two teams competing in the tournament.
Each team will play three matches. The two teams that finish first and second overall in the preliminary phase will qualify for the final phase of the playoff tournament, which will take place in February with the venue yet to be decided.
South Africa missed out on direct qualification for the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil when they were knocked out in the quarterfinals of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament by hosts Morocco in August.
They then had to take on Nigeria in a playoff with a place in the FIFA playoffs at stake and upset the Super Falcons 2-1 in Casablanca.
South Africa competed at the World Cup finals in France in 2019 and four years later in Australia and New Zealand got past the first round and into the knockout stage.