16 Dec 2015

Club licensing is a vital development that will help improve the level of football in Botswana and Africa. 

Botswana Football Association (BFA) president, Tebogo Sebego, said this at a Confederation of African Football (CAF) consultative seminar in Gaborone.

Sebego said the seminar was timely since CAF had taken a position not to allow clubs who have not being licensed by their member association in accordance with CAF requirements to participate in CAF club competitions.

“Botswana was given the last warning last year and will not be allowed to field any club in the CAF competitions in 2016 if the clubs are not licensed,” he said.

However, he said CAF was generous enough to accept and fixture Botswana’s two club champions. The clubs are Mochudi Centre Chiefs and Gaborone United who will compete in the 2016 champions league and confederations cup.

He said this was on condition that duo meet the club licensing requirements. Therefore, he said the seminar was the last resort for the BFA to facilitate compliance with the long standing CAF requirements.

Sebego appreciated the presence of the CAF delegates, stating that they would help equip them with the necessary skills to improve the running of football at club level and consequently at national level. 

“To optimally benefit from this group of international professionals and to make sure we speedily fulfil the club licensing requirements, we have identified a group of diverse individuals.  The individuals from within the football fraternity, some served in the BFA structures before,” he said.

He explained that part of the group will form the First Instance Body (FIB) that will evaluate the readiness of the clubs for licensing.  He also stated that the Appeals Body (AB) would receive and deal with the grievances arising from the FIB.

However, he explained that not all the identified individuals will form part of the FIB, citing that they are only restricted to five members for each of the bodies. Sebego further said when his committee came into office, it advocated for commercialisation of football in Botswana.

 He said the dream was farfetched as long as structures were still firmly founded on volunteerism and amateurism. He said structures such as club licensing should help drive them to professionalism.

“We should not only determine the minimum that our clubs should meet, we should insist that those requirements are met,” he said. “In a bid to support the exercise, FIFA has generously offered an amount of P300 000 for the whole exercise,” he said.

The delegation of Suzgo Nyirenda from Malawi who is a CAF club licensing committee member, Kawemba Byemba of Tanzania, an infrastructure criteria instructor and Honor Janza of Zambia, a sporting criteria instructor, conducted the two-day workshop.

Nyirenda said the objective of club licensing was to improve the economic and financial capacity of clubs through proper corporate governance and control.

He also said the licensing sought to ensure and guarantee the continuity of international clubs competitions during the season. Ends