15 Jan 2017

CAF Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers 2019 draw that was conducted on January 12 in Libreville Gabon has placed Botswana in a rather tricky and unpredictable Group I.

The group consists of Burkina Faso, Angola, Mauritania and Botswana. On paper Burkina Faso are the favourite in the group given that the recently released FIFA rankings has placed them on position 53.

Botswana and Mauritania share position 113, while Angola is at 144. However both teams are not strangers to the Zebras, given that they have met in different competitions. Just recently Botswana managed to beat Burkina Faso 1-0 in AFCON 2016 qualifier game played in Francistown. However things changed when Zebras was away because they were humbled with a 2-1 margin.

Against Angola the two side have met on several occasions in international competitions, but the Palancas Negras have proved to be a hard nut to crack for the Zebras.

However Zebras managed to redeem their pride against Angola beating them 3-0 in penalty shoot-out during the 50th  independence celabrations in Gaborone.

However, Zebras coach, Peter Butler said Group I was a fair group provided the team is given support and resources to prepare for the qualification.

He said for the team to qualify all stake holders need to be more organised, given that in the last qualifiers they only played two friendly matches in two years, which he said did not help the team to go far in the qualifications.

“It doesn’t matter which team you play, whether it is Lesotho, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, or Egypt, at the end of the day you have to prepare for the games by playing friendly matches. It is during friendly matches where technical team can identify their team’s strength and weaknesses,” he said.

The coach further said with proper preparation, they  can go far in the competition, adding that Zebras hve proved that they can beat the so called super powers like Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Furthermore, he said the country has good and emerging players who are capable of facing and competing in Group I, adding that what the nation should do is to give them support, to go on and showcase their ability.

 “...But bottom line is that we have to invest in our national team. If you don’t invest in the national team, then it it’s a problem, countries like Guinea Bissau, Burundi have invested in their national teams. If you don’t invest, you won’t get results, it’s as simple as that .  BOPA