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Following the announcement of the sacking of the senior men national team Head Coach’s Mogomotsi ‘Teenage’ Mpote by Botswana Football Association (BFA) this week, some local football analysts have expressed mixed feelings about the latest development at the association.
Mpote was appointed Head Coach of the Zebras last year in November taking over from Adel Amrouche.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the BFA announced that following an internal assessment and evaluation of where the Botswana Senior men’s national football team, the Zebras currently are and where they want to be, it has parted ways with Mpote.
In an interview, one of the local sports Analysts, Jimmy George said the decision to part ways with Mpote by the association is purely ill informed and bad for the team and does very little to the morale of the team. George is of the view that the timing is bad as it could have come prior to the previous international week, adding that whoever the new coach will be, they will have to hit the ground running.
George indicated that former Zebras Coaches Adel Amrouche, Mogomotsi Mpote, the late Pio Paul have all come and gone, which may be an indication that the problem does not lie with the coach but elsewhere.
“Mpote is as good coach as any other you can get. If the association was willing he would take the team to AFCON. We don’t need a new Coach but we need a new outlook. We need to resuscitate the Under 23, Under 20 and Under 17, We need new impetus, fresh outlook and an honest opinion where the pain is.” He said.
For his part, another analyst Fabian Zulu is of the view that the expulsion of Mpote won’t affect the team that much. He believes that the team needs a coach who will stand his ground, and not allow any interference. “As you have long noticed people were questioning his selection which brought a lot of concerns,” he said.
Zulu noted that the performance of the team at the hands of Mpote was not good enough to compete at AFCON or to qualify for the World Cup as the rankings of the team went down since he took over.
Reached for comment, Mpote only confirmed his expulsion from the BFA and the aspects of the press release but he could not get much on the issue as well as to what next for him. Mpote has pleaded with Times Sport to give him a period of a week to prepare himself to give more details.
Meanwhile BFA has stated that the Zebras will be entering a difficult and demanding era as they try to qualify for the AFCON 2025 and the World Cup 2026. It noted that the decision was taken with the interests of the Zebras further revealing that the BFA National Executive Committee led by its president, Mr Mclean Letshwiti has already started a process to ensure that Mpote’s successor takes over the Zebras reins in a seamless way.
