Botswana should take grass roots development serious or forget the World cup

By Pulane Kelapile



Botswana under-20 national football team

Football and development go hand in hand. there is no how one can survive without the other. The newly appointed senior national team head coach Peter Butler as well as the technical director Benny Kgomelo said they will focus on reviving Botswana Football Association (BFA) development structures.

Interestingly, Kgomelo said he was going to start developing young players as young as the age of six, whereas Butler promised that he was going to use young players in the senior national team.

The main concern however is how they are going to achieve this goal in a country like Botswana. which does not take development seriously. Development should be an ongoing process whereby there are policies and structures which will complement the process.
 

When players are developed they should advance from one stage to another because no one remains young forever. Just like a student progresses from primary until tertiary level, the same must apply with a football player.
 

There is no development taking place if the players cannot graduate from U-12 all the way to the senior national team level. We don’t have development in our structures and clearly there is something we are not doing right.

For example, the under-17 team which represented Botswana at the Africa Junior Championships under the tutelage of Kagiso Kaizer Kobedi is currently in the dark.  We don’t see them shining in the BeMobile Premier League let alone the national first division.
 

Some of them will never grow to reach a level where they can represent Botswana at national team level. In addition, the under-20 team that represented Botswana at the COSAFA Championships in Lesotho comprised of good players like Thatayaone Ramatlapeng, Ogomoditse Sitang, Unobatsha Mbaiwa, Keagile Kgosipula, Entle Bakwena, Andrew Makopo, Kabelano Mooketsane just to name a few. 
 

None of the above mentioned players are playing regularly. If we are serious about football development then we should model it alongside education. In that way, young players will not be lost as they advance to junior or senior schools. All stakeholders should be engaged to make sure we develop the youngsters physically, psychologically and educationally.

Perhaps what should be done is BFA should come up with policies which will bind all teams in the premier League.  Teams should be required to have development structures and each team should have a certain number of these young players in the match day squads. There is no need to bring old foreign players into our teams while we can produce youngsters of our own.

End…….