As I try to cover football from all over the world in an unbiased manner, I picked a completely random non-European country to discover football there. The imaginary pin on the imaginary globe landed in Botswana, a country not exactly known for its strong football tradition, so I'd say a perfect candidate for this experiment. Satisfied with the result I dived right in it, and this is what I've found.
Botswana is a Republic in the south of Africa. It borders South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Zambia, and most of its land is covered by the Kalahari desert. It is home to 2.4 million people and it gained indipendence from the United Kingdom in 1966.
Known for its wildlife and natural resources (i.e. diamonds!) Botswana is considered one of Africa's most stable and peaceful democracies, with a growing economy ranking 4th in Africa in terms of GDP per capita. It is also potentially the place where humanity started, as various researches suggest that it may have been the birthplace of the homo sapiens approximately 200,000 years ago.
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| Yep, it's time to book a trip to Botswana. From atalante.fr |
The competitions
Botswana's football pyramid is divided into four tiers. The top division is the Botswana Premier League, where the best 16 clubs in the country compete to conquer the title of national champions and to qualify to the CAF Champions League, a goal that is only achievable by the league winners because of Botswana's low position in the African rankings.
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| Jwaneng Galaxy celebrate the Premier League title. From premiumread.com |
The third tier is called Division One and is split into 17 regional leagues, each having a different number of clubs to reduce the costs of the competitions, as this division is not exactly flooding in money. At the end of the season all the 17 regional championship qualify for the playoffs: the teams are split geographically into four blocks, where another round robin is contested, with each team playing everyone else once. The four clubs that win these playoff groups earn promotion into the First Division!
Below Division One there is fourth tier Division Two, which is composed of district leagues in which small villages and communities can compete. Promotion to Division One is achievable by any club, no matter how small, so in theory any little village can dream of making it into the Premier League one day!
The main cup competition is the FA Challenge Cup: it is contested by 48 clubs from across the divisions, and is a chance for smaller teams to compete against top flight clubs. All 16 Premier League clubs qualify directly for the round of 32, whereas the top 8 clubs from each First Division group and 16 Division One teams play against each other to reach the round of 32 themselves. The winner of the Cup earns qualification to the second most important African club competition, the CAF Confederation Cup.
The clubs
Township Rollers FC are by far the biggest and most successful club in Botswana. Based in the capital city, Gaborone, they play their home matches in the Botswana National Stadium. They have won the Premier League a record 16 times and the Challenge Cup 8 times, famously winning a treble of the two mentioned competitions and the Mascom Top 8 Cup in 2018.
As record champions of Botswana, they have participated multiple times in the African continental cups. However, they only made it past the preliminary round on two occasions: in the 2006 Confederation Cup, where they reached the round of 16, and in the 2018 Champions League, where they reached the group stage and earned four points in a difficult group with Espérance de Tunis, Al Ahly and the champions of Uganda KCCA.
The Rollers have a massive following all over the country, attracting big crowds regardless of the location of the stadium they play in. The Popa is part of everyday life in the city, and their blue and gold colours are often displayed by the fans in the streets of Gaborone.
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| Township Rollers. From africanfootball.com |
Often nicknamed the Money Machine due to its history of being a financially sound and well sponsored club, Gaborone United reached the round of 16 of the 2010 Confederation Cup in 2010, where they even won the first leg against egyptian club Haras el-Hodoud, only to be defeated in the second leg in Egypt. In the same year they had reached the second round of the Champions League qualifiers after they famously defeated South African giants Orlando Pirates on away goals and Mauritian club Curepipe Starlight, but were defeated by Zimbabwean club Dynamos just before the group stages.
Mochudi Centre Chiefs have often challenged the two Gaborone clubs across the late 2000's and early 2010's. They were founded in Mochudi, a village about an hour northeast of Gaborone, by local elders in 1972, and have won four Premier League titles and one Challenge Cup between 2008 and 2015.
They participated in the Champions League in 2013, losing in the first round to former Club World Cup finalists TP Mazembe, in 2014, losing the preliminary round to the same Dynamos that defeated Gaborone United, and withdrew in 2016, not even playing the preliminary round.
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| Centre Chiefs fans. From sundaystandard.info |
They managed to reach the Champions League group stages in 2022 at the first time of asking, but only managed one point against Tunisian club Etoile du Sahel before crashing out. They repeated the feat in 2024, beating Orlando Pirates on penalties in the second round, but once again struggled in the group stages, although this time they scored four points including a massive away win at Wydad Casablanca, a club that won the competition three times! This famous 0-1 victory forced the Moroccans out of the competitions and is a symbol of a growing football movement in Botswana, especially with Galaxy in the rise.
This year they unfortunately missed out on the group stages, but the future is certainly looking bright in Jwaneng.
Now looking at some fallen giants we have the Botswana Defence Force XI, which is the club of the military, which has won seven Premier League titles just like Gaborone United, but their last one came in 2004, just like the third and last of their Challenge Cups. They are based in Mogoditshane, just like the Mogoditshane Fighters, although the military team is still in the Premier League while the Brazilians have fallen into the First Division despite having found success of their own over the turn of the millennium, with four league titles and three cups, their latest trophy being conquered in 2003.
The National team
Founded in 1970, the Botswana National team did not enter the qualifying stages of any international competition until the 1994 World Cup in the United States and the African Cup of Nations in the same year in Tunisia.
Never being close to qualifying for a World Cup, Botswana currently sits six points behind Algeria and Mozambique halfway through a six-team group stage in which the first team qualifies directly for the World Cup and the second team qualifies to a second round. They'll play Somalia on March 25th to keep the dream alive, but a first ever World Cup qualification for Botswana is looking really unlikely.
In the African Cup of Nations on the other hand, things have been improving since the qualifiers for the 2006 edition, when Botswana actually started winning matches. They earned qualification to a major tournament for the first time in 2012, reaching the group stage but losing all three matches against Ghana, Guinea and Mali.
They will have a second attempt next winter in Morocco, where they will play their second ever AFCON and are grouped with Senegal, D.R. Congo and Benin! Despite the group looking tough, exciting times are ahead for Botswana, with football in the country rising slowly but consistently.
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| The Botswana national team. From thegazette.news |
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