Women’s World Cup 2019/South Africa

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This article is about the South African women’s national football team at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. South Africa entered the final for the first time and qualified as a finalist of the Women’s Africa Cup 2018. The South Africans were able to take the lead in their first game, but did not defend them and were eliminated after three defeats as the first team.

Qualification

For the Africa Cup, which served as qualification for the World Cup finals as in previous years, South Africa had to qualify in two games in June 2018 in the second qualifying round against Lesotho, which were won 1-0 and 6-0.

In September 2018, the South Africans won the 2018 COSAFA Women’s Championship by a 2-1 final victory against guest participants Cameroon.

For the tournament in Ghana, national coach Desiree Ellis nominated 21 players, including two players (Tiisetso Makhubela and Amanda Mthandi), who had made their first international match shortly before the tournament in a test match against Ghana. Four players, on the other hand, already had more than 100 international games.

The South African team met in the first game on record champion Nigeria and won 1-0. The goal scored in the 57. Minute replaced Thembi Kgatlana in the 85th. Minute, who with a total of five goals also became the best scorer of the tournament. In the second game against Equatorial Guinea was won 7-1 – for Equatorial Guinea it was the highest international defeat. By a 1:1 in the last group match against Zambia, in which Kgatlana scored the goal for South Africa already in the eighth minute, South Africa became group winner and met in the semi-finals on Mali, which had reached the semi-finals for the first time and tournament hosts Ghana had turned off. With 2:0 South Africa prevailed here too and qualified for the first time for a World Cup final. The subsequent final against Nigeria was lost after goalless 120 minutes in penalty shooting.

During the tournament and the two qualifiers, 22 players were used, but only Bambanani Mbane, Lebohang Ramalepe, Jermaine Seoposenwe, Leandra Smeda and Nothando Vilakazi participated in all seven games. Africa’s record international player and captain Janine van Wyk was only used in the five games at the Africa Cup, as she played for Houston Dash in the NWSL during the qualifying games. She was represented in the two qualifying matches by Vice-Captain Refiloe Jane, who could not be used in a total of six appearances only in the final against Nigeria, as she had to leave early to her club Canberra United in Australia.

Overall, the South Africans scored 18 goals in the seven games. Thembi Kgatlana scored the most goals (5, all as the best scorer in the Africa Cup), Jermaine Seoposenwe (3, 2 of them in the qualification) and Leandra Smeda and