10 Aug 2026

Botswana Football Association (BFA) president Tariq Babitseng has read the riot act to local football administrators, warning that beautiful strategies and modern infrastructure are entirely meaningless without deliberate, long-term player development.

Speaking during a football Pitso recently, Babitseng said having well-crafted strategies, assembling committees, opening offices, and building facilities while failing to develop better footballers is a recipe for disaster.

The BFA president emphasised the urgent need for a clear, synchronized pathway that guided local talent from grassroots football through youth categories, into senior leagues, and ultimately into the national teams. 

He added that the structural overhaul must extend beyond players to encompass technical personnel.

The domestic game, he said, requires highly capacitated coaches, referees, technical directors, and administrators who fully understand that developing football was a long-term process.

“We cannot expect to identify a young player today and demand that he or she produces international results tomorrow. Development takes time, but it also takes structure, investment, capacitation, and consistency,” he said. Turning his attention to the country’s sports infrastructure, the BFA president urged administrators to stop looking at stadium construction simply as civil engineering projects. 

While pitches and training facilities are vital, he said they only become valuable assets when actively utilised to nurture talent.

He stressed the need to build facilities that players could use—facilities where children could dream, where clubs could train, and where quality football could be played.

“When we build them, we must also ask who will maintain them, how they will be used, and how they will remain sustainable. Development is not the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Development is what happens afterward,” he said.

Addressing the financial bottlenecks plaguing the local game, Babitseng acknowledged that football requires money and was naturally capable of attracting substantial investment. 

However, he warned that corporate funding would remain elusive if governance structures were weak. “We need sponsors, investors, commercial partners, broadcasters, and supporters who consume football, but we must understand something: money follows value,” he said. Sponsors, he noted, wanted stability, professionalism, visibility, an audience, and confidence that the organisation they were associating themselves with was properly governed.

“So, if we want more money in Botswana football, we have to make Botswana football worth investing in,” he said.

To change the current narrative, Babitseng urged administrators to focus on expanding local competitions, growing the fan base, and intensifying marketing efforts. He advised teams to leverage digital platforms effectively to tell the compelling stories of their players and clubs to ignite public excitement.

As the biggest sport in the world BFA President said football should not be struggling to convince people of its value.

Meanwhile, BFA Safety and Security Committee chairperson Carlos Motaung said the association’s immediate mission was to ensure football matches were hosted in secure environments. To achieve this, Motaung said the committee was moving swiftly to strictly regulate stadium access through valid ticketing systems which he said would ensure spectator numbers perfectly match safe stadium capacities, making the mitigation of overcrowding and unauthorised entry inevitable.

The security chief noted that recent assessments by his committee showed that poor ticketing strategies and a complete lack of match categorisation were the primary drivers of dangerous overcrowding at high-profile local fixtures. ENDS