South Africa failed to depart for the\u00a02026 World \u200cCup\u00a0as planned on Sunday after some players and officials were yet to receive visas 11 days ahead of their tournament-opening match against co-hosts Mexico due to be watched by millions worldwide.<\/p>\n
The team had been \u200bdue to leave on a charter flight for their training base in the \u200bMexican city of Pachuca but that was postponed while the South African \u2060Football Association tried to sort the paperwork.<\/p>\n
“This SAFA travel and visa debacle is embarrassing and \u200bgrossly unfair towards the players and coaching staff,” said Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie in a \u200bpost on X.<\/p>\n
“I have informed SAFA that I need a report and action must be taken against those responsible for this mess. We are being made to look like fools.”<\/p>\n
The football association said in a \u200bstatement that the team was unable to fly in the morning as planned due \u200bto “challenges regarding visas” for some players and officials.<\/p>\n
“SAFA is working around the clock to ensure that the team \u200ctravels \u2060to Mexico City as soon as possible,” it added, without giving more details of the specific problems.<\/p>\n
“We remain committed to ensuring that the team\u2019s preparations for the tournament remain on track and in the meantime, Bafana Bafana will continue to train in Johannesburg until departure.”<\/p>\n
EMERGENCY \u200bMEETING<\/strong><\/p>\n An emergency SAFA meeting \u200bwas planned for Sunday \u2060night.<\/p>\n South Africa kick off the World Cup in Mexico City on June 11, and are appearing at the global finals for the \u200bfirst time since they were hosts themselves in 2010.<\/p>\n An administrative bungle \u200bin qualifying almost \u2060cost them their place at the finals when their 2-0 victory over Lesotho was overturned after they\u00a0fielded an ineligible player in Teboho Mokoena, who was suspended for the clash.<\/p>\n Despite this, they \u2060still finished \u200ba point ahead of Nigeria and Benin in their \u200bqualification pool.<\/p>\n South Africa also have Group A games against Czech Republic (June 18) in the U.S. city of Atlanta \u200band South Korea (June 24) in Monterrey back in Mexico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa failed to depart for the\u00a02026 World \u200cCup\u00a0as planned on Sunday after some players and officials were yet to receive visas 11 days ahead of their tournament-opening match against co-hosts Mexico due to be watched by millions worldwide. The team had been \u200bdue to leave on a charter flight for their training base in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,30,326],"tags":[5187,122,4764],"class_list":["post-21013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-southern-africa","category-sport","tag-mexico-city","tag-south-africa","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21015,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21013\/revisions\/21015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}