Women’s football in the country has to be structured in a stimulating way that will open up funding for it.
This emerged at a meeting between the Botswana Football Association (BFA) and Women’s League Committee at Lekidi last week.
The women’s leagues has been halted and its national committee was demanding funding from the BFA. The BFA National Executive Committee (NEC) insists that the league structures be revised for the provision of funding.
The national women committee has to dissolve the super league and set up structures that suit regional football for the provision of funding, a source said.
“The BFA has pointed that their budgets are tight and can only seek for funding from FIFA after adhering to standards of the world football governing body.
“As it stands it will be difficult to source funds due to lack of structures ensuring development of women football. FIFA stipulates that the league structures commence from regions and elevate to the upper league which is not the case with the local league that does not allow promotion and relegation,” the source said.
BFA spokesperson Tumo Mpatane confirmed the meeting to bring order to women football was held earlier in the week. He said the matter was still being discussed internally, but they were working on the best possible solution to resurrect local women football.
“We believe the meeting has brought some light. We have to follow the procedures and comply with standards of structures required by FIFA,” Mpatane said.
He said with the current situation it would be complicated for the association to seek funding that would assist in development of women football from FIFA.
“The amount of money in the association is budgeted and our hands are tied so the only way out is to source funds from FIFA and it is critical for us to comply with structures that could be recognised by the football governing mother body,” said Mpatane.
He further stated that they were aware that some regions could not make up the required number of clubs to form a league and were planning on remedying that.
Botswana National Women Football Committee vice chairman Victor Tshambane said despite differences the meeting was fruitful and had opened eyes for all stakeholders on measures to take to revive women football.
“We had a fruitful discussion and we will wrap up the findings in our next meeting scheduled for April 27 which might influence the league to resume. We believe that with or without some structures, funding can be processed for the benefit of women football,” said Tshambane.
