A Preview of Bafana Bafana's Chances in the World Cup

Throughout the history of the World Cup, there have been 15 separate hosts of the ultimate football sporting event on the planet.

During every single World Cup, the host nation has been able to achieve great success, whether that means winning the tournament or making it to the knockout round when you were not expected to.

Now in the 19th World Cup final, we could see something happen to the host nation that has never happened before: The host nation could fail to advance onto the knockout stage, which is expected by many to happen to South Africa this year.

There are many reasons why people believe that Bafana Bafana will be unable to advance, as they are in an tenacious group with Mexico, Uruguay, and France.

And these three sides are all inside of the top 20 in the FIFA World Rankings, while South Africa find themselves in 20th place in Africa (or 88th place overall in the world), which is the lowest-ever place for a host nation going into the World Cup.

But despite this, a South African fan might point to the United States in 1994 as a nation that was lacking in good football quality but was able to advance.

But the difference between that USA team and South Africa today is that the United States were at least able to make the 1990 World Cup, where even though they did not garner a point, they at least did get the experience to help them in 1994.

And even in 1994, the USA finished third and were able to advance, which is the final World Cup in which finishing third in your group was respectable enough for a nation to advance from their group.

Sadly, for South Africa this year, they do not have that luxury to fall back on if two other nations fail to advance.

Another disadvantage for South Africa this year is that they were not even able to qualify for the African Cup of Nations.

Currently on South Africa's squad, a large portion of the players all come from South Africa's Premier Soccer League, which is not known to be an exceptionally strong league and could be a liability for South Africa in the World Cup.

But despite that, there are players such as Aaron Mokoena, Kagisho Dikgacoi, and Steven Pienaar who play in the English Premier League, which shows that the talent pool in South Africa does have some players that are recognizable to the average fan.

Along with that, South Africa does have some success in international competitions as of late, with their solid fourth place finish in last June's Confederations Cup.

Of course, there were those final two matches in which they gave Brazil and Spain all that they could handle (even though South Africa failed to win either match).

But this was also not the first time that South Africa has defied the odds in a major tournament that they hosted in their country, as they were able to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup and the 1996 African Cup of Nations when they were both hosted in South Africa.

But regardless of those success stories, South Africa has the group stage to worry about, as now we are just 55 days away from the start of the South Africa-Mexico match at Soccer City to start-off the World Cup.

Despite the fact that South Africa is ranked so low by everyone, I will make a prediction that will please many fans of the Bafana Bafana.

My prediction is that we will be seeing South Africa in the Round of 16 as they will manage to finish second overall in Group A, as they will be able to advance due to strong determination from not only the players, but the fans of Bafana Bafana and their vuvuzelas.