Social soccer gets organised
Local Sunday soccer teams have recently come together to form the Botswana Social Soccer Association ( BSSA) in order to protect and regulate the integrity of their game. The BSSA was formed to promote the very essence and fun factor of social football and to curb the invasion of players from the Botswana Football Association affiliates and constituency league.
In an interview this week, BSSA public relations officer, Bakang Sesiwa said the social soccer body was formed back in 2018 to regulate social clubs in the country. Some of these teams consist of retired players and mostly aging football enthusiasts. “Such individuals cannot play at the same level with active players or even constituency players. Our view is that professional league players should stay away from social soccer,” Sesiwa said. The BSSA spokesperson further explained that players from more advanced football leagues tend to bring a spirit of competiveness to the social soccer scene.
Sesiwa further argued: “The idea is to have fun and stay fit as opposed to being competitive against other teams. As social soccer we decided that this was unfair and we had to draw the line somewhere and protect the
social aspect.”
Sesiwa said as public relations officer’s from different social soccer teams in Botswana, they eventually came together and formed a whatsapp group where most of the ideas to form the association started to flood in. “After discussing ideas on the social media group we decided to approach the Registrar of societies so that we could be able to approach our stakeholders as an association. However, teams have been slow to join the association as we currently have between 11 and 20 teams.”
Sesiwa said the BSSA was supposed to launch earlier this year but the COVID- 19 outbreak deterred their plans. “At that point we had already consulted key stakeholders like the Botswana Football Association (BFA) and the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Culture Development (MYSC). We plan to go and benchmark neighbouring South Africa where they have their own Sunday Soccer Association.”