21 Aug 2019

Botswana Football Association (BFA) chief executive officer, Mfolo Mfolo,  says the association has started to take women football seriously.

Speaking at a press conference  inj Gaborone on August 20, he said women football was a prime pathway to qualify for AFCON and the World Cup.

“This is an area that we are going to nurture, and make sure that in a few years to come, we would have made history, with one of our women’s teams qualifying for a major competition,” he said.

Furthermore, he said Botswana senior women football team would play an important fixture against South Africa at the National Stadium on August 30.

Mfolo said South Africa had proved to be a hard-nut to crack for Botswana, adding that most of the time Banyana Banyana beat Botswana coming from behind.

“It means there is a mental block. We need to demystify that South Africa is ready for a taking, I believe and hope that this time around, we will take them on,” he said.

Mfolo stated that Botswana would send a team to compete at the COSAFA Under-17 Girls’ Championship billed for Mauritius from September 13-22.

He said the performance they displayed, in the just ended COSAFA indicated that Botswana had a good team for the future.

“The technical director took a deliberate decision that the under 20 girls, may compete at the senior category and the under 17 girls, compete at the under 20 category during the COSAFA championship,” he said.

The arrangement, he said, paid dividends given that the under 20 team defied all odds and qualified beyond the group stages.

BFA technical director, Serame Letsoaka, said the BFA would hold a women-specific course, which would be conducted by FIFA on September 17-20, adding that the regions had already submitted all the names of participants.

“We are trying to give a lot of focus to women football and we have also appointed an officer who would be working on the administrative part in the women football,” he said. ENDS