South Africa still have a chance to qualify for next year’s Women’s World Cup, but it is a complicated route that starts on Thursday.
Having lost out on the possibility of automatic qualification with their quarterfinal defeat to hosts Morocco at the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations finals last Saturday, they now have to seek a backdoor entry through three tiers of playoffs qualification, where two more African sides could join the four automatic qualifiers at the tournament at the 32-team finals in Brazil from June 24 to July 25, 2027.
First, Banyana must overcome old nemesis Nigeria in a playoff in Casablanca on Thursday with a 10pm (SA time) kick-off.
Should South Africa beat the Super Falcons, they will have a place in November’s first inter-confederation playoffs along with the winner of Thursday’s other African playoff between Ghana and the Ivory Coast. They will join Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) and Uzbekistan from Asia; Ecuador or Venezuela from South America and Papua New Guinea from Oceania in a six-team tournament at a centralised venue. The teams will be drawn into three tiers to play a set of predetermined matches with teams from the same confederation barred from facing each other.
The top two teams from this phase will advance to the final playoff in February, which also consists of six teams – two teams advancing from the first playoff in November-December and four teams from Concacaf (2), Europe, and South America (1) competing in single knockout matches to determine the final three qualifiers for the Women's World Cup.
Teams will be ranked according to the most recent women's world ranking; the three highest-ranked teams will be seeded into pathways, and the other teams will be drawn against them. Teams from the same confederation cannot be drawn into the same pathway.
This month’s Wafcon in Morocco has seen the traditional pecking order of the female game on the continent turned on its head, with Algeria and Malawi booking first-ever World Cup places and defending champions Nigeria knocked out in the quarterfinals at the weekend.
Morocco will also go to next year’s World Cup in Brazil along with Cameroon.
Wafcon in Morocco served as the qualifiers for the World Cup, with the four quarterfinal winners all advancing directly.