22 Feb 2017

Botswana Football Association (BFA) president, Maclean Letshwiti was amongst the 54 presidents of African football associations who attended the first ever FIFA summit in Johannesburg.
Letshwiti left for Johannesburg yesterday and is expected back home today.

The norm has been that  all African football leaders from different regions  only meet during the CAF and  FIFA congresses, but this time around FIFA president, Gianni Infantino has found it prudent to converge the English speaking country summit to strategies as how the game can be developed.

Some of the issues to be discussed include amongst others, plans to expand the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams.

However, BFA president said in an interview before his departure, that the summit was a welcome development as it would give African football leaders the opportunity to discuss with Infantino at the block level.

Some of the pertinent issue to be discussed during the summit, he said were football integrity, and corporate governance.

Letshwiti added that the summit would also be used to discuss as to how the federation leaders view the state of football in their respective countries and regions.

After being elected FIFA president, Infantino made  it categorically clear that FIFA had gone through sad times, moments of crisis, but those times were over, therefore there was a need to implement the reform and implement good governance and transparency and the need to have respect.

He said they would restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world would applaud them for what they would do in FIFA in the future.

“We have to be proud of FIFA, and everyone has to be proud of FIFA and we have to be proud of what we’ll do together in FIFA,” he said. BOPA