BFA was irresponsbile!
In South Africa, soccer enthusiasts are saying Banyana Banyana’s 10-0 victory over their Botswana counterparts on Saturday was a final declaration that Botswana’s football standard is still light years away from matching theirs.
One proclaimed in a comment to a South African online publication: “Well done Banyana, it’s good to have finally sent a clear message that the likes of Botswana are no match for us.” Another said: “We placed this Botswana where they belong. We should force them to show us respect.”
The two sides played a friendly match at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg on the afternoon local soccer enthusiasts were preparing to watch the evening premier league humdinger featuring blood rivals Township Rollers and Mochudi Centre Chiefs.
Many Batswana who had shown interest in that women’s game soon shifted their focus to other chores when South Africa’s stalwart Portia Modise scored the fourth goal in the first half of the match. Some more hopeful and patriotic Batswana football lovers say their interest waned much later, after the eighth goal. All however agree to the embarrassment they endured as their hopes of some brilliant showing by the Botswana ladies were shattered piece by piece by a rampant South African side parading some of its best talents in the business.
It is thus not surprising that the average South African football follower would come out head held high declaring that playing “the likes of Botswana” is a waste of their time. How anybody chooses to take such sentiments however, is really inconsequential. The most important follow-up question after that match should revolve around the preparedness of the Botswana team ahead of the Banyana Banyana game. Friendly match or not, the 10-0 result is an embarrassment to anything this country has set out to do in trying to improve the standard of football. An even stronger South African women’s team beat Botswana 4-0 a couple of months ago, and while the South Africans kept together since then to continue preparing for the 2014 CAF African Women Championships scheduled for Namibia this October, the presence of the Botswana players melted into oblivion, with no meaningful activity deliberately set up to keep them in shape.
With a full-time Netherlands-born coach hired to revamp the fortunes of Banyana Banyana, a deliberate programme has been in place there to ensure the national team players are kept busy and made sharper through and through. In addition, the women’s soccer leagues in South Africa this past week were reaching a climax with some of the clubs winning their respective championships. Conversely, there has been no football activity for women in Botswana, whether at club or league level. Only a few of Botswana players, the clubs will attest, show up for what often amounts to three or six-man training sessions when there is no running competition to stimulate their interest.
The South Africans on the other hand are never idle, with several competitions at club and provincial level always ensuring the players fight for a place in their various age-based national teams. Their senior national team has an ever-running programme thanks to a full time coaching personnel led by the former Netherlands coach and Technical Director Vera Pauw. In March, way before the qualifiers for the 2014 CAF African Women Championships, Pauw was on a nationwide talent-identification programme as the leagues there were underway. From as early as April, Banyana Banyana have been playing friendly matches involving several African sides, including Botswana whom they beat 4-0 in June. Even after their friendly duels against Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana in recent weeks, they are now going out to play Ivory Coast. Never idle, with a well-defined and definite structure. They have the former national team coach Joseph Mkhonza as a National Selector, and all these months - even before preparing for the October continental showpiece - the players there have been busy and sharp.
Conversely, the local players have been busy with their non-football related lives. Yet, when the South Africans faxed Botswana a proposal letter for a friendly match, unfit individuals were quickly assembled from nowhere to go for the game in Rustenburg. They could only work together for two days - rusty and with no physical fitness. The result of all that? An embarrassing yet fitting 10-0 defeat. It could have been more. Now the players are back in Botswana – most of them idle again, even with the looming start of the local women’s league in a week’s time. And who cares! The coach and the players will be blamed; the coaches will blame the lack of enough time to prepare, and the Botswana Football Association will decry the lack of funds. It is a vicious cycle.
In the meantime, our football remains stagnant; the women’s game is regressing; there is no effort to be proactive, and the little money available is lost in misguided priorities. And yet we claim to be at par with the South Africans who at least know the right time to act and when to react. It was only some two years ago that the Botswana ladies team beat Banyana Banyana 1-0 away from home in an official CAF game although the South African side would later win the second leg encounter in Molepolole to win the overall tie. Since then, nothing has been done to help the local women’s team keep up with the neighbours.
The South Africans themselves have introspected, and in Pauw eventually appointed a full time coach with vast international experience having also coached in Russia while a Technical Director there. What are the local authorities doing about the state of women football in Botswana, even away from the face of this past weekend’s shameful defeat? Does the nation even care? BFA Technical Director Benny Kgomela says they do have a deliberate programme in place to see to the improvement of Botswana’s game – in fact for all the national teams, he says. The message from him is that all will be well eventually; that the programmes and plans are there. The Technical Director is at least modest enough to admit that the team was not ready to play any team this past weekend, let alone against South Africa.
Why then throw the hapless girls into the snake pit’s dark end? Kgomela refers all such inquiries on the matter to one Senki Sesinyi, head of women’s football in Botswana who also sits in the BFA National Executive Committee. Although the latter’s phone rings unanswered, it turns out that by accepting the Banyana challenge, the BFA was under pressure not to disappoint the South Africans. The local football governing body wanted to keep the cordial relationship between the two associations intact. What if South Africa rejects a proposal from Botswana in future? The BFA reportedly wants Bafana Bafana to play the Zebras on Independence Day at the National Stadium, and to ensure they do not risk their proposal being rejected, they had to accept the untimely challenge for the Banyana Banyana game.There was no consideration for the psychological impact the game was likely to yield on the local girls, and perhaps the South Africans would not understand when told that the Botswana team was not ready.
In the end, a bunch of zero-prepared individual girls was ferried to South Africa to boost the neighbours’ egos at the expense of Batswana’s pride. The national team as a national asset demands protection and respect, friendly match or not. At the match in question, Botswana’s flag was hoisted high, and the national anthem played and sung before the game – a clear indication that the team is not representing some individuals’ interests, but those of the nation. It was therefore unfair to accede to South Africa’s request at the expense of national pride when it was clear to everyone that there basically was no team to help Banyana Banyana in their preparations. And how the local women shake away the stigma of such a thrashing remains to be seen. Banyana Banyana play in the CAF African Women Championships next month, a stage Botswana could not reach after being defeated in the preliminary qualifiers earlier this year by a less resourced Zimbabwe side.
