South Africa reached the knockout phase at a World Cup for the first time \u2060when Thapelo Maseko’s second-half strike gave them victory against South Korea, who can still qualify as one of the best third-placed teams.<\/p>\n
Maseko fired the ball into the bottom corner in the 63rd minute to put South Africa, who will face co-hosts Canada in Los Angeles on Saturday, on four points behind Group A \u200cwinners Mexico who beat \u2060the Czech Republic 3-0.<\/p>\n
South Korea, who started with talisman Son Heung-min on the bench, have three points.<\/p>\n
South Africa had failed to advance from the group stage in their first three World Cup appearances in 1998, 2002 and \u200c2010.<\/p>\n
The Koreans threatened after two minutes when Kim Min-jae’s header was cleared off the line by \u2060Aubrey Modiba, before Lee Kang-in fired over from inside \u200cthe penalty area shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n
South Africa gradually grew into the \u2060contest and \u200cnearly struck in the 19th minute when Maseko raced onto a through ball, only for Lee Gi-hyuk to produce a superb last-ditch tackle.<\/p>\n
South Korea goalkeeper \u2060Kim Seung-gyu then made an excellent double save, first denying Thalente Mbatha \u2060before smothering Evidence Makgopa’s follow-up effort.<\/p>\n
Though they had hardly mounted a threat in the second half, South Africa struck with a superb finish by Maseko. Found by a precise pass by Moremi, he shifted the ball onto his left before burying it \u200cin the bottom right-hand corner.<\/p>\n
Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c9 with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa reached the knockout phase at a World Cup for the first time \u2060when Thapelo Maseko’s second-half…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-517250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}