South Africa begin another bid to qualify for the Fifa World Cup with a home clash against Benin in Durban on Saturday.
It is now 31 years since they first entered the preliminaries for the global showpiece event, and after some early success it has largely been a tale of woe.
But every new campaign brings a chance to turn that around and as we look forward to that prospect, we add up their numbers on their qualification record.
1 – The first ever World Cup qualifier for the side was away in Nigeria and proved a harrowing experience as the reality of facing the top teams on the continent hit home. The Super Eagles romped to a 4-0 victory over the shell-shocked South Africans. It remains their biggest defeat in the qualifiers.
1 – Bafana’s first goal in World Cup qualifying was scored by the late Phil Masinga against Congo in 1992, though he would net a much more famous one five years later that would seal the team’s place at the 1998 World Cup in France. Masinga did love a goal against Congo and their neighbours DR Congo in World Cup qualifying – Bafana netted six times against them during the striker’s Bafana career and he got four of those.
2 – Bafana have qualified for two World Cup finals from seven attempts in the preliminaries – 1998 and 2002. In 2010 they entered the tournament automatically as hosts.
3 – Bafana’s biggest away win in the qualifiers was a 3-0 success in the Central African Republic in 2013, when Bernard Parker, Siphiwe Tshabalala and Katlego Mashego were on target.
4 – Bafana’s biggest victory in the World Cup preliminaries is 4-1, which they have achieved twice. They beat Equatorial Guinea by that scoreline in 2008 and then dispatched Botswana in 2013.
4 – Bafana have only lost four of their 29 home qualifiers to date, going down to Ghana (2005), Nigeria (2008), Cape Verde (2017) and Senegal (2017). They have been victorious in 21 of those games, a healthy win ratio of 72 per cent. They have scored 44 goals in that time and conceded only 17.
5 – No Bafana player has scored a hattrick in a World Cup qualifying game, but five have netted a brace. Shaun Bartlett was the first against Malawi in 1996, while Delron Buckley got two in the infamous victory over Zimbabwe in 2000, where a stampede in the stands left 12 people dead. Mbulelo Mabizela scored twice against Cape Verde Islands in 2004, and later that campaign Sibusiso Zuma got a brace versus DR Congo. The last player to do it was Bernard Parker against Botswana in 2013.
6 – The team that South Africa has faced the most times in World Cup qualifying is Burkina Faso. They clashed in the preliminaries for the 2002, 2002 and 2018 finals. Bafana have won three of the six clashes, with two draws and a single defeat. They have met current pool opponents Nigeria and Zimbabwe four times each before, but never faced Benin or Rwanda in the World Cup qualifiers. In fact, they have never played the latter in any fixture before.
7 – Shaun Bartlett is the leading scorer for Bafana in World Cup qualification matches with seven, one more than Phil Masinga. Perhaps surprisingly, South Africa’s leading marksman in the history of the national team, Benni McCarthy, only scored three times in the qualifiers from 12 appearances. Bartlett also leads the way in all World Cup games (including the finals tournament) with nine goals.
12 – The team’s longest unbeaten run in World Cup qualifiers is 12 games from April 1997 to June 2004. It started with a 2-1 win over Zaire (now DR Congo) and was ended by a 3-0 loss in Ghana. The longest unbeaten run the team has managed to put together since then is four games.
40 – The number of different scorers for Bafana in World Cup qualifiers, not including a own goals from Angola’s Diniz and Getaneh Kebede of Ethiopia. The list does read like a who’s who of South African football, from Doctor Khumalo to Steven Pienaar, Siyabonga Nomvethe to Benni McCarthy. There are a few less likely names on their though, such as Matthew Booth, Eric Tinkler and Thabo Matlaba.
57 – The number of qualifiers Bafana have played. Of those they have won 33 and lost 15. They have outscored their opponents 74-48. It is kind of win or bust for Bafana, with only nine draws, or just 16 per cent of their matches. That is around half their draw per centage across all games since readmission, which stands at 30 per cent.