Amical : Le MC Alger domine Al-Hilal

Le MC Alger continue de préparer activement la nouvelle saison lors de son stage en Autriche. Après un premier résultat encourageant face à Mamelodi Sundowns (1-1) quelques jours plus tôt, le champion d’Algérie a signé un succès convaincant contre Al-Hilal (2-0).

Les joueurs de Khaled Ben Yahia ont rapidement pris les commandes de la rencontre. Sofiane Bayazid a trouvé la faille à la 30e minute pour donner l’avantage aux siens, avant que Mohamed Benkhemassa ne vienne confirmer la victoire mouloudéenne en seconde période. Une prestation solide qui témoigne de la progression du groupe durant cette préparation.

Le MCA avait déjà montré de bonnes dispositions face à Mamelodi Sundowns, tenant du titre de la Ligue des champions africaine. Les Algérois avaient ouvert la marque par l’intermédiaire de Ferhat, auteur d’un joli lob, avant de concéder l’égalisation des Sud-Africains en fin de partie. esporist.com

Les hommes de Khaled Ben Yahia auront encore un dernier test à disputer en Autriche. Le rendez-vous est fixé au 3 août face à Al-Shabab, une ultime rencontre qui permettra au staff technique d’effectuer les derniers réglages avant le coup d’envoi de la saison 2026-2027.

The post Amical : Le MC Alger domine Al-Hilal appeared first on AfricaFootUnited.

Kaizer Chiefs will begin their quest for Betway Premiership glory on Saturday, 1 August when they take on newly promoted Kruger United in their opening match of the 2026/27 season at Mbombela Stadium.

Kick-off is at 20:15.

The highly anticipated clash marks the start of a new league campaign for both sides, with Amakhosi looking to lay down an early marker while Kruger United prepare for their historic debut in South Africa’s top flight.

Kaizer Chiefs head into the encounter buoyed by a successful pre-season, which included victory over Zimbabwean side Scottland FC in the Toyota Cup at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace last weekend.

Under head coach Fernando Da Cruz, Amakhosi will be aiming to build on that momentum and avoid any early-season slip-up against an opponent eager to make an immediate impression in the Premiership.

Experienced campaigners

Kruger United may be newcomers to the division, but they boast several experienced campaigners, including Rwandan international goalkeeper Fiacre Ntwari, who is on loan from Kaizer Chiefs and could come up against his parent club.

The Mpumalanga-based outfit will also enjoy home support, although a large travelling contingent of Kaizer Chiefs supporters is expected to fill Mbombela Stadium after once again turning out in huge numbers during the Toyota Cup.

Tickets for the Betway Premiership season opener between Phefeni Glamour Boys and The Village Boys are available through Computicket, as well as Shoprite and Checkers stores nationwide, at R100 each.

Will Kaizer Chiefs get their season off to a winning start?

Let us know by clicking on the comment banner below …

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations is in full flight in Morocco, and South Africa is in the thick of it. Watching closely is a woman whose fingerprints are on some of the tournament’s most important firsts.

Janine Anthony has never lifted a trophy or worn a national jersey, yet few people have done more to make African women’s football visible, from a borrowed radio microphone in Owerri to the commentary booths of Rabat and Casablanca.

Her story begins in a traditional Nigerian household in the nineties, where football was the soundtrack of family life. She watched Maldini, Nesta and Beckham alongside her father, his cousins and nephews, and had no idea a female equivalent existed until Mercy Akide-Udoh and the Super Falcons appeared on the family screen.

Rena Wakama Appointed Nigeria Women’s Basketball Team Head Coach

“The day that I saw her brilliance, how she was so tenacious on the field, I said, that’s me. That’s definitely me. That’s definitely what I wanna do,” says Janine Anthony, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LadiesMarch. Her parents had other ideas, and the professional game’s doors stayed shut.

“And the minute I saw her, I was her. And when I couldn’t really be that on the pitch, I did it off the pitch.”

International Football Broadcast Pioneer, Janine Anthony

Broadcasting arrived almost by accident. In 2012, still at university in Nigeria’s south-south, Anthony was pushed into a guest slot on Hot FM in Owerri by a friend who refused to let her turn it down. The minute the microphone went live, she was hooked. Back in Lagos she freelanced on Femi and the Gang at Nigeria Info FM, then co-created its female equivalent, Femi’s Divas, the all-women crew behind the Ladies Match radio show.

The crew mixed analysts, comics and advocates, some of whom barely followed sport, and the depth of their preparation floored her. “I think that really showed me that when women are given the opportunity or create space, they will get things done.”

Yet Ladies Match had 30 minutes on Sundays, 52 shows a year, while the women’s game went unreported for the other six days of the week. In 2015, inspired in part by Ann Odong’s pioneering Australian platform, Anthony recruited teenage volunteers through Twitter direct messages and took the project digital as LadiesMarch, the name adjusted for intellectual property reasons, the mission untouched.

She funded it herself, working multiple jobs to cover web hosting and accreditation to the Women’s Euros and other global events. “I just wanted women’s football to have a voice, to have a home. I wanted writers to have a space.” The payoff came at a WAFCON press conference, when she introduced herself and the coach lit up: federations, it turned out, had been using LadiesMarch for scouting reports on their opponents.

BBC Sport came calling in 2018, and for three years she worked as reporter, presenter and Team Lead of the West Africa Sports desk, funded at last to cover the women’s game. “Firstly, what I learned is make things so simple that my grandmother can understand.” Attracting new audiences, she says, matters more than retaining old ones, and representation is how you do it.

Then came history. After she filmed a street piece asking whether audiences would welcome a female commentator, made in the wake of the 2018 men’s World Cup, her bosses quietly took note. At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony became the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament, heading an all-female BBC crew. She rehearsed into mirrors, through hair braiding sessions and skipping ropes, and drew Madagascar, famed for jaw-breaking names, among her first assignments.

“I saw the beast, I slayed the beast, and it opened a lot of doors on the continent.”

The next first arrived by direct message. A FIFA representative found her on LinkedIn ahead of the 2022 WAFCON in Morocco, and Anthony became the consultant who assembled CAF’s first all-female commentary teams, English and French crews working on site in Rabat and Casablanca. Laetitia Dembo and Gaëlle Moudio, whom she placed on CAF’s French-language world feed, are now credited as the first women to commentate a Women’s AFCON. “No one’s gonna find you in your house. Well, sometimes if you do delivery, but no one’s gonna find you in your house. So you’ve got to put yourself out there.”

Her storytelling range kept widening. On Premier League productions she interviewed Mikel Arteta, earned warm praise from Ian Wright, and produced features on Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané in their home countries, the latter requiring a small boat crossing to reach Bambali. At StarTimes she stepped from associate producer to first female presenter of the Bundesliga and Serie A when the scheduled presenter failed to arrive.

And as a producer on All Roads Lead Down Under, the six-part FIFA+ series on the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, she watched players break down in tears telling stories no one had asked them before. “And what it showed me is that a lot of the results that we see on the pitch, 100%, is cooked off the pitch.”

That insight carried her into technology. As TikTok’s Sub-Saharan Africa Partnerships Lead for Sports and Gaming, Anthony built standalone content verticals, creator monetisation frameworks and the TikTok Awards in Africa, using women’s football clubs as her presentation decks and the phone as the great equaliser for underfunded teams.

At PawaTech, as Head of PR and Communications working across sponsorships, she helped deliver the Locker Room Bonus, which pays instant, equal mobile money rewards to women and men players alike.

“So it’s taken twelve years to get to a space where, I’m not saying opportunities, I’m saying pay for work.” Now at Snap Inc. as a consultant leading Creator Partnerships and Content Strategy in Africa, her vision is a creator economy where young Africans earn a living from home soil.

The mission has reached beyond sport too. In 2022 she was among the founding members of Black Foreigners in Ukraine, leading communications for the non-profit that raised funds and coordinated emergency relocations for African students, work covered by CNN, the BBC and ITV. “So no knowledge is a waste. I’ve never been deployed at anything like that, but I knew how to talk. I knew how to convince.”

For all the firsts, Anthony remains a reluctant subject who rarely gives press and prefers the spotlight on others. Her message to the young girls of Nigeria and South Africa carries no such hesitation. “Make me your representation now. I’ve done it. I am living proof that it’s happened.”

She has followed gsport for the best part of a decade, she says, and even recalls featuring among the gsport Awards nominees along the way. “It’s incredible work that you do for South African sports, the awards, the features.”

Having built a platform of her own from nothing, she knows exactly what that work takes. As WAFCON plays out in Morocco, with women in the commentary booths she helped open, the visibility Janine Anthony has spent two decades building speaks for itself.

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Main Photo Caption: Janine Anthony, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LadiesMarch and the consultant behind CAF’s first all-female WAFCON commentary teams. All Photos: Supplied

Photo 2 Caption: At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony made history as the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament.

Photo 3 Caption: From Hot FM in Owerri to BBC Sport, StarTimes and FIFA+, Anthony has told the story of African football on ever bigger stages.

Photo 4 Caption: Equal pay runs through Anthony’s work, from her years of advocacy for the Super Falcons to the Locker Room Bonus at PawaTech.

Photo 5 Caption: Now consulting for Snap Inc. in Africa, Anthony is building a creator economy for the next generation of storytellers.

The post Janine Anthony, a Global Architect of Women’s Football Firsts appeared first on gsport4girls.

Elle a tenu à faire passer un message clair en assurant que la rencontre doit rester strictement sportive. Face aux questions portant sur les relations politiques entre les deux pays, la capitaine des Vertes a balayé toute tentative de polémique, préférant mettre l’accent sur les enjeux du terrain. Présente en conférence de presse, la défenseure de Bristol City n’a laissé aucune place aux interprétations. Interrogée sur l’atmosphère particulière qui entoure ce derby maghrébin, elle a rappelé que le groupe algérien est exclusivement concentré sur la compétition continentale et sur ses objectifs sportifs.

«Nous sommes ici pour la Coupe d’Afrique»

Questionnée par un journaliste camerounais sur l’influence que pourrait avoir le contexte politique entre l’Algérie et le Maroc, Marine Dafeur a immédiatement recadré les échanges. «Nous sommes ici pour la Coupe d’Afrique, il n’y a aucun contexte particulier. C’est simplement un match», a-t-elle déclaré, refusant d’alimenter un débat extérieur au football. La capitaine des Vertes a également relativisé l’importance médiatique de cette confrontation. «Je ne sais pas si c’est le match le plus attendu. Pour nous, c’est avant tout notre deuxième rencontre dans cette compétition», a-t- elle expliqué, insistant sur le fait que l’équipe prépare cette affiche avec le même sérieux que n’importe quel autre rendez-vous du tournoi.

Un statut de leader confirmé

Les propos de Marine Dafeur reflètent l’état d’esprit affiché par la sélection algérienne depuis le début de la CAN. Les joueuses de Farid Benstiti souhaitent rester focalisées sur leurs performances plutôt que sur tout ce qui entoure cette opposition régionale. La capitaine avait déjà montré l’exemple lors de la première journée en ouvrant le score face au Sénégal grâce à un penalty parfaitement transformé. Son but avait largement contribué au succès des Algériennes, victorieuses 2-0 pour lancer idéalement leur campagne continentale.

Cap sur un rendez-vous décisif

Fortes de cette première victoire, les Vertes abordent désormais un rendez-vous qui pourrait peser lourd dans la course à la qualification. Jeudi soir, au stade Moulay El Hassan, elles retrouveront le pays hôte avec la ferme intention de confirmer leur bon début de parcours. Au- delà de la rivalité sportive entre les deux sélections, le groupe algérien entend conserver la même ligne de conduite : privilégier le football, rester concentré sur le terrain et poursuivre sa progression dans la compétition. Pour Marine Dafeur, le message est limpide : seule la performance sportive comptera au coup d’envoi.
– DJAMEL OUAGLAL

L’article CAN (F) : Dafeur « Seulement un match à jouer» est apparu en premier sur Foot Afrique.

World Rugby has released the schedule for next season’s HSBC SVNS Series and World Championship, with Cape Town again a key stop in the campaign.

The 2027 Series will once again visit Dubai, Cape Town, Singapore, Perth, Vancouver and New York before culminating in the HSBC SVNS World Championship across Hong Kong, Valladolid and Bordeaux.

Dubai will stage the series opener over the weekend of 28-29 November, with the series heading to the Mother City seven days later. Singapore will host the first event of the new on 30-31 January, followed by events in Perth and Vancouver, before the regular season wraps up in New York on 13-14 March.

The announcement follows a landmark 2026 competition which saw New Zealand’s women and South Africa’s men claim the HSBC SVNS Series titles in New York, before Australia’s women and South Africa’s men were crowned HSBC SVNS World Champions, capping another memorable season of world-class rugby sevens.

The 2026 season attracted more than 530,000 fans across the Series, a 21% increase from 2025.

HSBC SVNS also surpassed one billion social media impressions for the second consecutive season, with digital engagement increasing by 60% year-on-year and player followings growing by more than 13% as the sport continued to reach new audiences around the world.

HSBC SVNS continues to demonstrate its importance in developing international talent, with around 50 players who previously competed on the Series now representing their nations across the Nations Championship and World Rugby Nations Cup, underlining the strength of rugby sevens’ high-performance pathway.

HSBC @SVNSSeries 2027 schedule confirmed as road to Los Angeles 2028 gathers pace https://t.co/7lJ2wVJ7RN

— World Rugby Media (@worldrugbymedia) July 29, 2026