Benin, South Africa battle for Group C ascendancy

03/24/2025 08:00 AM

Benin and South Africa will battle for ascendancy in Group C of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers when they meet at the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium in Abidjan on the evening of Tuesday 25 March 2025.

South Africa claimed top spot in the group on Friday evening when they defeated Lesotho 2-0 in Polokwane. Bafana Bafana had to ensure a frustrating first hour of the match, before goals from Relebohile Mofokeng and Jayden Adams took them to victory.

Benin had claimed top spot the day before thanks to a 2-2 draw away to Zimbabwe in neutral Durban, with Steve Mounie and Dodo Dokou scoring to put the Cheetahs in charge, before the Warriors struck back via Knowledge Musona and Marshall Munetsi.

Along with Nigeria's 2-0 away win over former leaders Rwanda in Kigali on Friday (Victor Osimhen scored a brace for the West African heavyweights), the results have seen Group C take a more definable shape.

South Africa are top with 10 points, with Benin (8), Rwanda (7), Nigeria (6) and even Lesotho (5) still just about in contention for qualification, while Zimbabwe (3) appear destined for the wooden spoon.

Cheetahs coach Gernot Rohr is prepared to play mind games, labelling South Africa as "clear favourites to qualify" though his team is "preparing well".

SA coach Hugo Broos, meanwhile, is happy with the place his team finds themselves in: ""I’m very happy with the performance of my team […] and the pre-meeting that maybe [against Lesotho] we have to fight more than to play football but we did good. We are first in the group now, two points ahead, I think this is a good situation."

In head-to-head stats, Benin and South Africa have met in just two previous matches. The most recent was a World Cup Qualifier from earlier in this Group C campaign, which Bafana Bafana won 2-1 in Durban in November 2023 (with goals from Percy Tau, Khuliso Mudau and Steve Mounie), while the first was a 2004 Africa Cup of Nations group stage match won 2-0 by SA (with a brace from Siyabonga Nomvethe) in Sfax, Tunisia.