he Botswana Football Association (BFA) has adequately trained all clubs in the Botswana in Premier League (BPL) on how to achieve full implementation of the Club Licensing requirements of financial, sporting, legal, administrative and infrastructure in order to comply with the mandatory FIFA Circular No. 1128.

FIFA has set a deadline for all confederations to achieve full compliance of the circular. If this deadline is not respected by the confederation, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee has the right to sanction the relevant association directly in accordance with the FIFA Disciplinary Code.

Full implementation of both the FIFA and CAF Club Licensing regulations commenced in 2017 in order to ensure transparency and professionalism in football clubs.

The objectives of club licensing as stipulated in the implementation manual include ensuring that clubs have (a) appropriate infrastructure, knowledge and application in respect of management and organization; (b) improved sporting infrastructure; and (c) improved economic and financial capacity of the clubs, through proper corporate governance and control.

The BPL and National First Division (NFD) have been experiencing vast challenges in achieving the demands of the Club Licensing for the past three years.

Nonetheless, in order to avoid sanctions by FIFA, the BFA has been compelled to sanction all clubs that fail to comply with the mandatory Club Licensing Regulations as contained in the BFA Club Licensing Manual during this 2019/2020 season. The consequences of teams being non compliant will result in teams being relegated to lower division.