06 Nov 2019

In an effort to take football up-to-the-minute and played in all regions, Botswana Football Association (BFA) continues to train different coaches, who will in return drill players to become world beaters.

In that regard, BFA has engaged FIFA instructor Benny Meurs to drill 25 coaches for the Futsal coaching course.

Speaking at the course official opening on Tuesday, BFA technical director Serame Letsoaka said Futsal was a new project that the association had just started.

He said currently the association had an elite football running in the east and south, adding unfortunately that the children in the north and west had a challenge  of being part of the elite programme.

“As a result and because of the vast distance, we have in the west and the north decided to have a grassroots programme as part of our four-year development programme to have some form of competition,” he said.

Furthermore, he said grassroots was where children would have an opportunity to play five against five, adding as BFA they therefore felt that having a number of players participating in the programme would make it easy for children in those areas to taste competition.

He said the introduction of Futsal would also help in scouting talent within regions with less number of players needed per team as it required only five players as compared to 11.

He stressed that countries that had over time played Futsal had developed best players in terms of technique.

For his part, Meurs said Futsal had started in South America, Uruguay, Brazil in the 1930s and all famous stars in those countries had gone through such a programme.

“But of course football is still the big brother of the Futsal, and when I go around the world, very often I see there is a kind of competition between Futsal and football.

It is a pity because those in football are afraid of losing players to Futsal,” he said.

BFA general secretary, Mfolo Mfolo encouraged participants to be patient and become proactive rather than transactional leaders in order to be prepared for problems before they occurred.

He said BFA defined a four-year programme and they defined a player’s pathway with emphasis on mass participation, grassroots women football, youth and elite youth.

Mfolo said it was important to have game developers for every programme to support development of the game.

He, however, said he was confident that the pathway they had set would start showing some results in some years to come, adding that nurturing and developing the game was equally important.

He indicated that the association would support any plans by the technical department because their strategies would go towards having strong national teams.

Also, he said they would embark on the development of excellence schools and mini academies, noting that they had signed for the development of Ineos academy. ENDS