{"id":46935,"date":"2025-10-14T21:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=46935"},"modified":"2025-10-14T21:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:53:10","slug":"south-africa-qualify-for-2026-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2025\/10\/14\/south-africa-qualify-for-2026-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa qualify for 2026 World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Africa became the latest African nation to qualify for the 2026 World Cup after beating Rwanda 3-0 Tuesday to top its qualifying group, despite being docked three points for&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.trtafrika.com\/english\/article\/0f9d0c67c96c\">fielding an ineligible player<\/a>&nbsp;in earlier games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It will be South Africa&#8217;s first appearance at a World Cup since it qualified automatically as the host in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Africa\u2019s victory meant Nigeria finished second in the group and will have to qualify through a playoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nigeria beat Benin 4-0 at home after a hat trick from star striker Victor Osimhen. Benin had led the group before the last round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa became the latest African nation to qualify for the 2026 World Cup after beating Rwanda 3-0 Tuesday to top its qualifying group, despite being docked three points for&nbsp;fielding an ineligible player&nbsp;in earlier games. It will be South Africa&#8217;s first appearance at a World Cup since it qualified automatically as the host in 2010. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":46936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3295],"tags":[1648,4899,12661,7090,12234,434,1573,244,10885,36,5248],"class_list":["post-46935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-sport","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-benin","tag-games","tag-host","tag-nigeria","tag-rwanda","tag-south-africa","tag-victory","tag-world","tag-world-cup"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46937,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46935\/revisions\/46937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}