{"id":803669,"date":"2026-07-16T09:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/803669\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T09:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:42:10","slug":"heres-what-this-world-cup-says-about-football-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/803669\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s what this World Cup says about football in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nine of Africa&#8217;s 10 teams reached the knockout stage of the men&#8217;s <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/fifa-world-cup\/t-43747820\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Cup<\/a> , giving African sides a better progression rate than those from Europe and South America.<\/p>\n<p>So what lessons can African football take from this historic tournament?<\/p>\n<p>No. 1: Africa belongs among football&#8217;s elite. Morocco reached the quarterfinals for the second time in history, eliminating the Netherlands and pushing France all the way.<\/p>\n<p>Egypt nearly shocked Argentina. DR Congo led England. And Cape Verde became one of the tournament&#8217;s biggest success stories. The gap between Africa and the world\u2019s best is virtually nonexistent.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest reason Africa missed out on the semifinals was not a lack of talent: It was what some experts call match management, or the \u201clate goals curse\u201d as some commentators put it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine of Africa&#8217;s 10 teams reached the knockout stage of the men&#8217;s World Cup , giving African sides&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-803669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}