South Africa as the seeded nation in Group A has created the most evenly-matched group in the tournament, with the Bafana Bafana’s home pitch advantage helping to mitigate the talent gap between them and their other group mates: France, Mexico and Uruguay. On this edition of the World Cup Buzz podcast, Laurence McKenna, Kartik Krishnaiyer and myself preview the group that starts play on June 11, detailing each time and going match-by-match to determine which teams should advance to the second round.

On tomorrow’s podcast, we look at the defending world champions, Italy, and Group F, which includes New Zealand, Paraguay, and Slovakia.