This time around, it is the national Under-17 that is in the mix. The story is the same: A highly promising start suddenly looks like yet another opportunity lost. This week, we witnessed how the Botswana Football Association (BFA) once again reversed gains made by the junior national team that had posted impressive results in qualifying for the 10th Africa U-17 Championship in Morocco. The new BFA administration has again proven how it lacks the big stage temperament necessary to harness opportunities such as the one our teenagers had ably entered. But good leaders know that where money and related resources are in short supply, people skills will always win the day. Sadly, such wisdom seems lost to the Tebogo Sebego-led BFA administration.
Listening to the BFA president go on about how unapologetic he is about the decisions his National Executive Committee took offers a peep into professional relations and the leadership style at Lekidi. Under-17 coach Kagiso Kobedi has complained that the BFA has intermeddled with his award-winning recipe, replacing welfare manager Razor Tsatsilebe with Ramocha Tsieng and dropping the psychologist and the physiotherapist from the technical bench. Kobedi cries that the technical team has been whittled from 10 to seven members, only three of whom are experienced in coaching. All these decisions were made without informing the one man in whom the nation rests its hopes - Kobedi.
