{"id":208081,"date":"2025-09-24T18:58:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/botswana\/botswana-zimbabwe-zimbabwes-plan-to-host-bafana-bafana-clash-in-botswana-backfires-sa-venue-back-in-the-frame\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T18:58:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:58:22","slug":"botswana-zimbabwe-zimbabwes-plan-to-host-bafana-bafana-clash-in-botswana-backfires-sa-venue-back-in-the-frame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/botswana\/botswana-zimbabwe-zimbabwes-plan-to-host-bafana-bafana-clash-in-botswana-backfires-sa-venue-back-in-the-frame\/","title":{"rendered":"Botswana\/Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe&#8217;s Plan to Host Bafana Bafana Clash in Botswana Backfires &#8211; SA Venue Back in the Frame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">Zimbabwe&#8217;s plans to stage their 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifier against South Africa in Francistown have been scuppered by the Botswana Football Association (BFA), which confirmed that the Francistown Sports Complex is unavailable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"48\">The venue will host Botswana&#8217;s own qualifier against Uganda on 9 October, just a day before the scheduled meeting between the Warriors and Bafana Bafana. That clash of dates contravenes FIFA regulations, which require that visiting teams be given access to match venues&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202509240359.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Botswana\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/botswana\/\">Botswana<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zimbabwe&#8217;s plans to stage their 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifier against South Africa in Francistown have been scuppered by the Botswana Football Association (BFA), which confirmed that the Francistown Sports Complex is unavailable. The venue will host Botswana&#8217;s own qualifier against Uganda on 9 October, just a day before the scheduled meeting between the Warriors [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":208082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2461],"tags":[258,256,21595,4348,4718,2462,27487,7647,52419,6937,257,7586,254,18409,7726],"class_list":["post-208081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-botswana","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-backfires","tag-bafana","tag-botswana","tag-botswana-news","tag-botswanazimbabwe","tag-clash","tag-frame","tag-host","tag-news","tag-plan","tag-south-africa-today","tag-venue","tag-zimbabwes"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}