24 Feb 2021

Club licensing is a development tool for professionalisation of football clubs.

Speaking during ‘conversations with CAF delegates’, club licensing support mission in Gaborone on Tuesday, CAF club licensing senior manager, Muhammad Sidat said the objective of club licensing was to ensure  that professional clubs met minimum criteria of participation in competitions.

He said to ensure clubs sustainability, it was imperative that they were managed in a proper way, hence club licensing requirements such as having a qualified coach.

According to Sidat, club licensing required clubs to have youth team structures and proper financial prudency where by they would have a bank account and produce financial statements.

He said also clubs were required to have a legal component where they would have statutes and also being registered as an entity.

He said clubs  should have proper infrastructure ‘but CAF does not come up with one size fit all approach. It leaves to sovereign states to define their own criteria, but CAF only establishes a legal framework and establish  the applicability of  their own system,’ he said.

He said it was therefore upon each federation to apply what suited them, but aligned to the stipulated requirements.

Meanwhile Sidat who was accompanied by South African CAF club licensing instructor, Kabelo Bosilong, had an engagement with relevant stakeholder amongst them Botswana Football League chairperson Jagdish Shah, Botswana Football Association, national executive members and legal and compliance, Pako Moakofhi.

Botswana is one of the countries that were selected to pilot the online CAF Club licensing compliance.

BFA vice president-one Marslow Motlogelwa said club licensing was an integral part of standardising football.He said as association, they had to seek support from CAF in their effort to have proper implememented club licensing. ends