The Monitor (Botswana)

Youngest owner births football club

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He was rather skeptical at first but his love for the game brought him on board. It was the players’ determinat­ion and passion that pushed Kgosiyame to register for competitiv­e football. “I think around December last year, the team was playing in these festive tournament­s. But all along the players kept nagging me to register formally. Well, I thought on my side I was not ready and also for them too I thought they were not yet ready. But they kept asking until I gave in,” he said.

“I went to ask for advise from the relevant people in and around football about the procedure. It was a change of landscape because now we had to register players formally. We spent around P5,500 and P3,500 for the players’ registrati­on. We were also told to have a second kit and as well as playing and training grounds. I think the whole process cost us around P14,000,” Kgosiyame said. He also said the recruitmen­t process targeted players in the social team. He said Kegg Supa Strikers fed from not less than five social teams and acquired football league players.

As the club nears first six months, Kgosiyame has admitted the task has come with a lot of challenges. He cited the financial demands despite being run at amateur level. Kgosiyame said the team needs not anything less than P50,000 per month to run. “There are lot of challenges. Running a football business is challengin­g. Because at first players demand soccer boots and they do not want anything less than P700 and football equipment is very expensive. However, it’s not bad as we play most of our league games around our locality.

Our budget is also affected as the league started late so at times we have to play two games on a weekend, and that affects our budget because we initially budgeted for transport costs and meals for just one game per weekend,” he said. Kegg Supa Strikers has assembled one of the youngest squads in national leagues. The team’s oldest player is 28 years while the youngest is 16. The club has a full fledged playing, technical and administra­tive staff. Kgosiyame has an ambitious mission as he targets playing in the CAF inter club competitio­ns as early as possible. The team is having a good debut season, as they remain unbeaten from four games, playing to a draw once. Kegg Supa Strikers missed a chance to extend their lead at the top this weekend as their tie against Maphatswa was postponed.

“We want to build a strong team. Firstly we need to have good management. We want to build a team that can compete in CAF and be known as one of the strong local teams. This campaign is a baby steps season and next season we are going for the First Division and pass to Premier League and win the Premier League so we can play in the CAF competitio­ns,” Kgosiyame said.

Besides his football duties, Kgosiyame is a full time forex trader and runs Kegg FX, a company that teaches and advises anything to do with the model trading.

it’s not bad as we play most of our league games around our

locality.

 ?? ??

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