07 Jul 2015

The newly appointed Botswana Football Association (BFA), chief executive officer, Kitso Kemoeng says for a successful national team, there should be deliberate and well executed development structures adequate to support the national team and sustain its performance.

Unveiling his road-map on Monday July 6 in a press conference, he said it was paramount to look closely at how adequately football could benefit from such structures as Re Ba Bona Ha.

He said there was a need to revive holiday football camps and that there was also a need to revamp or resuscitate the ‘Chappies Little League project’ and other programmes with a potential to lay a solid foundation for football.

He said national youth or junior leagues were inevitable in order to close gaps in competition structures.

“We can’t compete at a high level without solid support structures, we need a deep introspection in this area, and this is going to be my area of focus, well mindful of the fact that some of the decisions might call for a change of policy, for which we would depend on our football politicians”, he said.

He said his agenda in the BFA was to improve Zebras rating, and that he was aware that would not be achieved in one day, given that it was going to take meaningful and well-resourced programmes to generate a future generation of star players who would catapult the standards of our national teams.

During his stay at the BFA, he said, Botswana would have a conveyor belt for generating future quality football stars, and also said he has developed many policies for the Botswana National Sports Council.

He however said in his quest to ensure that proper systems were in place to launch a new era, he was going to conduct an audit of what is available in the BFA and how effective it was, before embarking on a review of those already in place and initiating those that were not in place, but were important and necessary.

Talking about overseeing the financial wellbeing of the association and ensuring proper books of accounts, Kemoeng  said he was part of the team that requested  government to increase the BNSC grant from  P300 000 to over P20 million  in a space of about 10 years.

“I was part of the team that removed a nagging qualification from the BNSC financial statements, and convinced government to release the BNSC grants in one tranche for effective planning and operations’, he said.

He said they also developed financial policies that improved allocation and control of funds, in particular the finance department.

Introducing Kemoeng the Botswana Football Association president, Tebogo Sebego said the new Botswana Football Association executive officer was not new in football.

He said  Kemoeng  once coached some of the development teams in the country, and  also involved in the Re Ba Bona Ha structure, which was his brain child.

“The BFA job is not easy, whether as a president or as a CEO, it’s a very challenging task, it has a lot of opinions, expectations, and negativity that comes with football as a big family,” he said. Ends