{"id":32666,"date":"2026-07-24T22:29:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wafcon-2026-seven-stars-to-watch-at-tournament-in-morocco-and-why\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T22:29:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:29:39","slug":"wafcon-2026-seven-stars-to-watch-at-tournament-in-morocco-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wafcon-2026-seven-stars-to-watch-at-tournament-in-morocco-and-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Wafcon 2026: Seven stars to watch at tournament in Morocco and why"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Firmly established as one of South Africa’s senior leaders, Banyana Banyana’s skipper will be looking to help her team reclaim the title they won for the first time in 2022.<\/p>\n

“When you look at the number of teams in this year’s edition, I think this will be one of the most challenging tournaments we’ve ever had in the history of Wafcon,” said the 33-year-old midfielder, who recently joined an elite group by winning her 150th cap.<\/p>\n

At a minimum, South Africa will be looking to reach the last four again, which would guarantee Desiree Ellis’ team a place at a third successive World Cup, having reached the last 16 at the 2023 tournament in Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

“[The coaching staff] have experienced the team winning the Wafcon and not doing so well. We’ve got the recipe that you need in order to succeed,” Jane added.<\/p>\n

South Africa have been drawn alongside Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso in Group B.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Firmly established as one of South Africa’s senior leaders, Banyana Banyana’s skipper will be looking to help her team reclaim the title they won for the first time in 2022. “When you look at the number of teams in this year’s edition, I think this will be one of the most challenging tournaments we’ve ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-africa","category-world-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32668,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32666\/revisions\/32668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}