SAFA president Danny Jordaan addressing the crowd during the Bafana Bafana send-off ceremony with coach Hugo Broos and players Nkosinathi Sibisi, captain Ronwen Williams and Themba Zwane in attendance.
As the drums beat and the green-and-gold scarves waved inside the Standard Bank hosted send-off ceremony on Wednesday, the mood around Bafana Bafana carried echoes of a winter many South Africans will never forget.
Sixteen years after Siphiwe Tshabalala’s thunderbolt lit up Soccer City in the 2010 FIFA World Cup opener against Mexico, history has strangely circled back on itself.
This time, Bafana again stand face-to-face with El Tri in the opening match of football’s greatest spectacle — a coincidence that even SAFA president Dr Danny Jordaan could not ignore.
“This is rekindling moment of the 2010 World Cup. I think it’s the first time that you have two teams playing each other twice in the World Cup opener. I don’t know if it was orchestrated by FIFA that again South Africa and Mexico open this World Cup,” Jordaan joked.
