SOUTH AFRICA PERSPECTIVE

Pretoria covers the World Cup with the detachment of a country that is not qualified but hosted the 2010 tournament (first African host). The Citizen publishes a classic sports coverage: Semenyo and Partey named in the Ghanaian selection for the World Cup, Rodri saying his future at Manchester City can wait until the end of the tournament. South African coverage privileges technical angles and transfers rather than institutional criticism. This is typical of a press addressing a football-passionate audience that has already experienced the FIFA model in 2010 and knows its limits. The subtext is: we have already seen it, we have already paid, we now observe with professional detachment. The Citizen also dedicates space to Bafana Bafana (the South African team) which qualified for the Africa Cup but not for the World Cup — an angle of tempered national pride. The South African press is sensitive to a detail: Africa's withdrawal from the international football concert is documented with figures (few African players in the biggest European clubs, drop in transfers since 2020). This technical sports coverage therefore conceals a strategic reading: for Africa, the 2026 World Cup will be like all the others — a showcase that validates the existing sports hierarchies and does not overturn the economic dynamics in place. For Pretoria, the 2026 World Cup reverses nothing — it rather recalls that the globalization of football remains structured by hierarchies that neither 2010 in South Africa, nor the future expansion of the tournament to 48 teams, are enough to modify.