Pienaar Urges Bafana Bafana to Make Breaking Runs in World Cup Finale

Steven Pienaar has seen this movie before. He lived it in 2010. And as South Africa head into another do-or-die World Cup group finale, the former Bafana Bafana star has a simple, urgent demand for the current generation: start running in behind.

South Africa’s 1-1 draw with Czechia in Atlanta on Thursday finally put a point on the board at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but it did little to ease the tension. They sit bottom of Group A, staring at elimination again, with South Korea waiting in Guadalupe next Wednesday in a match that will begin at 3 a.m. back home.

Pienaar watched the Czechia game unfold and took to X, frustrated by what he saw as a team playing in front of defenders instead of stretching them.

“Why is there no running of the ball from Bafana? They all want the ball to feet, no deep runs,” he posted during the match.

The equaliser came late, Teboho Mokoena slamming home an 83rd-minute penalty to rescue a point and briefly tilt the game in South Africa’s favour. Bafana finished strongly, pushed for a winner, and showed the kind of urgency that had been missing for long spells.

Pienaar wasn’t swayed by the late surge.

“Well done boys. Now, on to the next. Please, next, we game we need breaking runs – please boys,” he wrote after the final whistle, doubling down on his call for movement, penetration, and bravery without the ball.

He knows the stakes. The former Everton, Tottenham Hotspur, Sunderland, Borussia Dortmund and Ajax playmaker was a central figure in South Africa’s 2010 World Cup campaign on home soil. Back then, Bafana also walked into their last group game with one point from two matches. They beat France 2-1 in Bloemfontein, produced one of the country’s great football nights – and still went out on goal difference.

This time, the margins are different. The tournament has expanded, the round of 32 beckons, and third place in Group A could yet be enough. But the table is unforgiving.

Mexico are in control with six points. South Korea sit on three. Czechia and South Africa are level on one point, with the Europeans ahead on goal difference. For Bafana, there is no hiding place: they must beat South Korea and then hope the numbers fall their way.

History offers little comfort. This is South Africa’s fourth World Cup appearance, and they have never made it out of the group stage. The current squad also arrives without a single active Premier League player after Lyle Foster’s relegation with Burnley, stripping the team of the kind of top-flight sheen that once came with names like Pienaar.

Yet the story of South African football is no longer written only in European dressing rooms.

At home, the game is thriving. Mamelodi Sundowns have turned domestic dominance into continental authority, lifting a second CAF Champions League title in the 2025-26 season. In the decisive second leg of the final in Rabat, it was Mokoena who delivered again, scoring the goal that sealed the trophy against AS FAR.

On Thursday in Atlanta, he was the man under pressure once more, stepping up from the spot to keep South Africa alive in this World Cup. Same player. Same nerve. Same outcome: a lifeline.

That is the edge Pienaar wants harnessed with smarter movement and more ambition off the ball. Runs that drag defenders away. Runs that open passing lanes. Runs that turn a neat team into a dangerous one.

Bafana Bafana have been here before, clinging to hope on the final day. The difference now is that the door to the knockouts is slightly ajar. The question is whether they are willing to sprint through it.