Botswana U20

Gaborone is a young capital built to run a country, and its national stadium — the ground the city offers up for football — is where Botswana sends its youth side to measure itself against the rest of the region. The Young Zebras carry that job: not a first team chasing trophies, but the age group meant to feed one, drawn from a pool the Botswana Football Association, founded in 1966, has spent decades trying to organise.

Their record shows up almost entirely at the COSAFA U-20 Championship, the regional youth tournament where southern African federations test their production lines against each other. Botswana's best answer to that test came twice, in 2009 and 2011, both times finishing third. The first was decided on penalties, a 3-2 shootout win over Madagascar after neither side could break a 0-0 draw; the second, in 2011, was a tidier 1-0 win over Malawi, played in a tournament Botswana hosted itself. A run to the semi-finals in 2019 stands as the closest they have come since, though the side has not managed to push past the group stage in the two most recent editions.

South Africa's U20 side has been the tournament's recurring measuring stick for Botswana, without either side building the kind of rivalry that gets a name of its own. What the age group does best is send players upward: Pontsho Moloi and Dirang Moloi both worked through every junior national level before stepping into the senior "Zebras" and into club football with Notwane, the clearest example of the pathway the programme is built around.

For all that, a COSAFA bronze medal from over a decade ago remains the high point on record, and the Young Zebras have yet to turn a group-stage appearance into a run deep enough to match it.