The Botswana Football Association (BFA) has joined trends applicable the world over pertaining to player registration and transfer that of electronic registration as opposed to the manual method or Blue Books.
The BFA says following the completion of the electronic registration system, known as the FIFA CONNECT, the use of the manual registration method (Blue Books) has ceased to exist. The Secretariat made the announcement on Tuesday informing all clubs that ownership of players will only be recognized using the electronic system.
“We therefore wish to urge all structures to make sure that all clubs participating in the various leagues (including youth) have registered all their players in the system as that is the only recognisable process/system of registering players for teams taking part in the BFA Competitions,” a communique from the Botswana FA read.
Furthermore, the Secretariat advised all clubs to commence the capturing of data in the FIFA CONNECT system whilst awaiting the commencement of footballing activity.
“It has been noted that most teams, especially women and youth have not yet completed capturing players in the system.”
On the other hand, the world body FIFA has categorically laid out the way how the processes will be rolled out and to what extent. “The use of an electronic domestic transfer system is a mandatory step for all national transfers of professional and amateur players (both male and female) within the scope of eleven-a-side football.
A national transfer must be entered in the electronic domestic transfer system each time a player is to be registered with a new club within the same association. Any registration of a player for a new club without the use of the electronic domestic transfer system will be invalid.”
After the adoption of the new system, FIFA instructs BFA that “Each association must have an electronic player registration system, which must assign each player a FIFA ID when the player is first registered.
A player must be registered at an association to play for a club as either a professional or an amateur in accordance with the provisions of article. Only electronically registered players identified with a FIFA ID are eligible to participate in organised football.” The requirement concludes by saying that by the act of registering, a player agrees to abide by the statutes and regulations of FIFA, the confederations and the associations.
