Manager: Desiree Ellis, 60, is a pioneer in African women’s football. The Cape Town native first began playing the game in a South Africa divided by apartheid and hardships. Ellis played – and scored a hat-trick – in South Africa’s first ever women’s international match, a 14-0 win over Swaziland at the age of 30 in 1993. Now she has steered the nation ranked 54th in the world to back-to-back World Cups.
Star player: Thembi Kgatlana, 27, scored South Africa’s first – and so far only – goal on the World Cup stage when she put Banyana Banyana ahead against Spain in Le Havre in 2019. Kgatlana has played club football in the United States, China, Portugal and Spain. She also played at the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations when South Africa were crowned continental champions in Morocco, a huge moment for women’s football in the country.