Bafana Bafana's ineligible player dilemma: What it means for their World Cup hopes

Bafana Bafana’s blunder in fielding an ineligible Teboho Mokoena in their last Fifa World Cup qualifier against Lesotho, could still come back to haunt them.

Bafana beat Lesotho 2-0 at the New Peter Mokaba Stadium five months ago. However, a dark cloud hung over their victory as Mokoena should not have played in that game, having already received two yellow cards in previous qualifiers against Zimbabwe and Benin.

Those clouds slightly subsided as Lesotho did not lodge a complaint with the governing body, which would have seen Bafana docked all three points and handed a 3-0 defeat.

But according to the Fifa disciplinary code, “if a team fields a player who is not eligible to participate (due to suspension, registration issues, nationality, et cetera), the match is automatically forfeited. The default result is a 3–0 loss, unless the actual result was even more disadvantageous to the offending team."

It woould seems Bafana are not yet out of the woods.

So, with uncertainty hanging over the Group C standings, where they currently sit on 13 points, Bafana can’t afford to leave anything to chance when they face Lesotho in their seventh qualifier at Free State Stadium on Friday night, and Nigeria in their eighth qualifier at the same venue on Tuesday night.

Should they fail to win both games, they run the risk of being overtaken at the top of the standings before the final two qualifiers next month. But if results go their way — both on the pitch and in Fifa’s disciplinary rooms — they could qualify for the global showpiece for the first time since 2010, when they were hosts.

Bafana won’t have it easy, though. Group rivals Nigeria and Benin are pushing strongly for the team to be sanctioned over Mokoena’s inclusion, a decision that would blow the group wide open and propel Likuena into second place.

Benin coach Gernot Rohr knows all about the consequences of fielding an ineligible player. His former side, Nigeria, were sanctioned in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers for fielding Shehu Abdullahi, who was suspended against Algeria.

As such, Rohr, speaking to Reuters, expressed his frustration at Fifa’s indecision, five months after the incident.

“It is not normal that we don’t know the situation about the points on the log table before our games this week,” he said.

“It is very, very strange. Normally, South Africa should lose three points and they (the points) should go to Lesotho. But nobody knows why they (Fifa) did not take this decision.”

Rohr’s counterpart, Bafana coach Hugo Broos, has expressed his disappointment at the Super Eagles’ obsession with seeing his team docked points by Fifa.

“We don’t think about it, we just look at the ranking of our group,” Broos said. “If there comes a moment where we lose three points, then okay — we can’t do anything about that decision.

“I always say that rules are to be followed. We did something wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it. But there was no complaint, so if there’s none, then nothing can be done. And a third or fourth party, who were not directly involved, must not start pushing for us to lose those three points. It has nothing to do with them — it was against Lesotho.

“I hope Fifa follows the rules and can resist the pressure that Nigeria is trying to impose. Follow the rules, man. Teboho shouldn’t have played there, but nobody from Lesotho said anything.

"They had the opportunity to do it, but they didn’t. Prove it on the pitch!”