Bafana Bafana's World Cup Challenge: Pienaar's Warning

Steven Pienaar has seen this movie before. He lived the tension of a home World Cup in 2010, felt the weight of a nation on his shoulders, and walked away knowing how thin the margins can be at this level. Now, from a distance, he’s issuing a clear warning to Bafana Bafana: start running in behind, or risk watching another World Cup slip away.

South Africa clawed their way to a 1-1 draw with Czechia in Atlanta on Thursday, their first point of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It kept them alive. It did not convince. They sit bottom of Group A heading into a decisive clash with South Korea in Guadalupe next Wednesday — 3 a.m. on Thursday back home — and Pienaar doesn’t like what he’s seeing off the ball.

During the Czechia match, the former Everton and Tottenham Hotspur winger cut straight to the heart of his frustration on X: “Why is there no running of the ball from Bafana? They all want the ball to feet, no deep runs.”

It wasn’t a throwaway line. It was a diagnosis.

South Africa did eventually stir. Teboho Mokoena buried an 83rd-minute penalty, Bafana surged forward, and for a brief spell they looked like the side more likely to steal all three points. The equaliser arrived, the pressure rose, and the mood shifted. The pattern in possession, though, barely changed.

Pienaar, even after the late rally, stuck to his point.

“Well done boys. Now, on to the next. Please, next, we game we need breaking runs - please boys,” he posted after the final whistle, doubling down on his call for more vertical movement, more ambition without the ball, more chaos in behind opposition defences.

This is not just any voice from the past. Pienaar, who shone for Ajax, Borussia Dortmund, Everton, Spurs and Sunderland, was a central figure in South Africa’s 2010 World Cup campaign. That squad, like this one, found itself walking into a final group game with a single point from two matches. They beat France 2-1 in Bloemfontein, produced one of the great Bafana nights, and still went out on goal difference.

The echo is hard to ignore.

There is, however, one crucial difference this time. In an expanded tournament, third place in the group could be enough to reach the round of 32. Mexico sit in control on six points, South Korea have three, and Czechia edge Bafana on goal difference with both teams locked on one point. The table is tight, the door is not closed, but South Africa will have to force it open.

History offers little comfort. This is Bafana’s fourth appearance at a World Cup, and they have never reached the knockout rounds. The current squad carries no active Premier League star either, after Lyle Foster’s relegation with Burnley stripped the group of its lone English top-flight representative.

Yet the picture inside South African football is not bleak. Far from it. Domestically, the game is thriving. Mamelodi Sundowns have turned continental dominance into a habit, lifting a second CAF Champions League title in 2025-26. Mokoena, the man who kept South Africa alive in Atlanta, also delivered the decisive goal in Rabat against AS FAR in the second leg of that final.

The same right foot that rescued a point on Thursday has already proved it can decide the biggest of occasions.

So the equation for Bafana is simple and brutal. The structure is there, the talent is there, the confidence from club level is there. What Pienaar is demanding — those breaking runs, those sprints beyond the last defender — is the edge that separates sterile possession from real threat.

Against South Korea, in a match that could finally drag South Africa into the World Cup’s knockout phase for the first time, the question is no longer whether they can keep the ball.

It’s whether they’re willing to risk everything by running without it.