Here to stay
... Eleven Angels’ dream is to continue gaining maximum points
Francistown based Botswana Football league rookies, Eleven Angels are planning to stay in the elite league for years to come after their story book promotion this season. Currently, the team plans to collect as many points as possible and after stage fright performance , losing a few of initial league games, the team has recoiled back to causing shocking upsets in the BFL.
This was evident this past weekend when Angels pulled a stunning 2- 0 victory over more experienced league campaigners, Prisons XI.
Angels’ 31- year- old head coach Seemo ‘ Sixteen’ Mpatane is the man charged with rallying the troops and dismantling established teams in the elite league. What started with the 5- 0 dismantling of Mochudi Centre Chiefs to gain promotion to the elite league seems to continue as a trend given the emphatic win over Prisons XI. “Talking about the first half of the game, we scored that header but we continued to miss clear cut chances, fortunately, for us we scored in the last minutes of the first half. So, scoring last minutes of the first half you go to the dressing room with confidence and come back oozing with added motivation,” an enthusiastic Mpatane said in a post- game interview this past weekend in Otse.
“Missing clear cut chances has been the story of our season so far. Our opponents were quick to overload the left side and launched an attack in the second half. The last five minutes were crucial as we came under pressure as Prisons launched a relentless attack but countered by making three substitutions at the same time and they managed to combine well and score on the counter attack.”
Mpatane continued: “We are happy for the three points. We might have skipped a couple of teams in the long standing but that does not count right now.” The coach said collecting points is what mattered. “What counts is collecting as many points as we can as this is a numbers game at the end of the season. What we are trying to do as a team is to survive and stay afloat because we came here with young boys and we got promoted with a very low budget.” According to Mpatane, about 95 percent of these boys had never experienced premier league football as their average age is 22 years old. So, when we come here and survive in this hostile environment of elite football, it would be a huge achievement.
“We got in at the wrong time as the