07 Aug 2023

Botswana U-20 women football team coach, Tapaphiwa Gaebolae says the team’s preparations for the World Cup qualifiers are on track following their 2-1 victory against Lesotho at Lekidi Football Centre in Gaborone on Saturday.

Botswana’s- two goals were netted by Jessica Maponga and Koketso Molwantwa respectively.

Gaebolae said in an interview that the team used the friendly encounter as a preparatory game for the qualifiers.

The team will play against Cameroon in October.

She said she was impressed with the team’s gallant fight against Lesotho adding that the game helped the technical team to identify gaps and how to address them before the start of their World Cup campaign.

The main focus, she said was to look at their tactical awareness, the ability to read the game and the strategies of their opponents.

She said the players also showed a lot of maturity as compared to their friendly games against Gaborone United and Security Systems.

“The girls played well but there is still a lot of work to be done, to fine tune some of the things for them to fully compete in the qualifiers,” she said.

For his part, Botswana Football Association (BFA) - technical director, Tshepo Mphukuthi said the main objective of the game was to check the team’s progress.

“Chances are that we will play some of our games, whilst some of our players will be writing examinations at their schools, so we were also trying other players in the event some are not available so that we have a backup,” he said.

Mphukuthi said funds and resources permitting they would continue to organise friendly games for the teams, so that they give a good account of themselves in the qualifiers.

Despite the absence of school sport, he said as the association they had  a pool of players in their system. “Remember, we have tournaments such as Bonita that we use to identify some of these players then we keep them in our system,” he said.

Meanwhile, Botswana Under-17 girls also played a friendly game against Lesotho which they also won by 2-1 on Saturday. ENDS