"Footballing nation" gets thrown around a lot, and it's a bit of a gated term.
By insiders' decree, only a footballing nation can decide who else is a footballing nation. Here's the thing, South Africa is, without a doubt, a footballing nation. Rugby football.
The Springboks, their national rugby team, are the most formidable squad in the world. They've won back-to-back Rugby World Cups (2019, 2023). They've won the last two Rugby Championships, which you can think of as a four-team Copa America. They've had six losses since they last raised the World Cup, most of them by a single score.
Rugby enjoys massive popularity in South Africa, but it was originally the sport of the ruling white class under apartheid. It's similar to the way football has a working-class history in England, while rugby was the sport Prince Harry and Prince William grew up playing.
The difference is that England's line was drawn by class and South Africa's by race.
In SA, most of that's changed recently, with Black South Africans working their way through the rugby academies and representing the team at the highest level, including the inarguable national rugby hero Siya Kolisi.
I say all this because the South African soccer team made it into the 2026 World Cup, then they tied Czechia and then they beat South Korea. They improved with every game they've played in the World Cup. They made it out of the group stage and into the knockouts, getting matched up against Canada in the first game of the round of 32.
South Africa breaks through, Thapelo Maseko
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero.bsky.social) June 24, 2026 at 9:26 PM
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They held one of the co-hosts level until the very last minute, when Stephane Eustáquio scored in stoppage time. South Africa lost, 1-0. They're a success regardless of result, and indisputably a Black South African success.
Soccer, not rugby, is the sport of the Black majority in SA, and Bafana Bafana is a direct representation of that. Where so many teams at the World Cup are buoyed by their players who participate in one of the Big Five leagues in Europe, 19 of the 26 players on Bafana come from the domestic South African Premiership, or the PSL.
Sixteen of those players represent either the Mamelodi Sundowns or the Orlando Pirates, the two titans of the league, who between them have won the last nine league titles and 20 all-time (Sundowns 15, Pirates 5).
This is the story. A faraway domestic league, in a country where football is overwhelmingly the Black majority's game, that steeled itself in its own competition and went toe-to-toe with Canada's much-lauded golden generation.
Eustáquio's goal came in the 92nd minute. They lost to a moment, which is how almost everyone loses at this stage.
That's the part worth sitting with. A Black South African team sharpened almost entirely inside its own league, in a country most of the football world never sees outside the "Rest of the World" section on EA FC, out-passed a World Cup co-host for ninety minutes and lost to a single shot worth 0.09.
South Africa was a footballing nation before kickoff, and didn't need anyone's permission to be one.