Bafana Bafana and the permutations to go through

<p>South Africa faces the Korean Republic at 3am South African time on Thursday at Monterrey Stadium in Mexico to kick-off matchday 3.</p>

<p>Mexico will take on Czechia at the same time in Mexico City Stadium as Czechia fight to secure their place in the knockout stages by keeping their third place ranking in Group A.</p>

<p>South Africa also hopes to move up from their fourth-placed standing by beating Korea to get three points, which would put them in second place in the group, or settle for a draw to gain one point to hopefully take the third-place spot in the group.</p>

<p><img src="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GROUP-A-2.jpg" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" loading="lazy" /></p>

<p>This is contingent on how Czechia performs against the Mexican hosts who have already qualified for their spot in the Round of 32 at the Mexico City Stadium where they gave Bafana Bafana their opening match defeat.</p>

<p>Whichever team comes second in the group automatically qualifies for the next round, but the third-placed team’s chances are still contingent on the performance of the other third-place teams in the <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/group-standings-soccer-world-cup-2026/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">remaining 11 groups</a>.</p>

<p>The 48 team format of the 2026 FIFA World Cup allows for only 8 of the 12 third-placed teams in each group to proceed to the knockout stages, which means that any third-placed team in a Group will hope that they have performed well enough to be in the Top 8.</p>

<p><img src="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Third-place-rankings.jpg" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" loading="lazy" /></p>

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