The Lesotho Football Association (LEFA) will hand over 4 000 balls worth over M1 million to clubs in the A, B and C Divisions for the 2024/25 football season under the LEFA Assistance Programme (LAP). LEFA President Salemane Phafane made the announcement on Monday and the handover will mark the second leg of the LAP initiative launched in 2022 to help lower league clubs with equipment.
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Lower league clubs last received two balls to last a whole season before LEFA increased the number to five balls in 2022 with training equipment such as cones and bibs.
Each club in Lesotho’s second, third and fourth tier will benefit.
Three of the balls will be for practice and are heavy balls designed to suit the bumpy nature of most training grounds while two balls are approved by football’s world governing body, FIFA, and are to be used in official matches.
Phafane said the custom-made Umbro balls, which bear the LEFA logo and Lesotho’s national flag colours, cost over M1.3 million.
“Each team will get five balls and we expect them to use them. Performance has to change now,” Phafane said.
“Three of them are for hard surfaces, our grounds, because you know where our teams play; two of them are FIFA match-balls, when they go into official games they will use them,” he added.
Phafane said there was public scepticism over whether LEFA would be able to sustain LAP programme when they first increased the number of balls the teams received from two to five.
Phafane said delivering the second phase of LAP proves the programme is sustainable.
“We are proud as LEFA that we have been able to sustain the programme and you can confirm it’s sustainable because this is the second edition of it,” LEFA president said.
LEFA is also confident that it has remedied a problem that plagued the first leg of LAP in 2022 of unscrupulous clubs and individuals that used the programme to siphon balls unfairly.
Phafane said the first handover of balls was undermined by clubs that suddenly registered just in time to benefit from the programme but did not compete in the league.
To counter that issue, LEFA tracked clubs for the entire duration of the 2023/24 league season to verify the validity of clubs.
“From the first batch we learnt there were teams that registered in order to take balls and they died after,” Phafane said.
“One club would register three teams at different levels and then the other two (teams) would die and then they would take the balls; so you (would) have a situation where one team had 15 balls while others had five,” he said.
Phafane expressed confidence that such issues would not arise again.
“We decided to change, we decided to do an audit of teams registered, then during the season we did another audit to see how many died,” Phafane said.
“Now at the end of the season, we did another (audit) and then we will give balls to teams that did not die during the season. (The LAP) will be for teams that played until the end (of the season).”
Tlalane Phahla
