Botswana U23

Keitumetse Paul spent five years working with Botswana's youth sides, shaping the under-23 group between 2015 and 2020 before his death in August 2021.

There is no single date to point to for when the side began. It has tended to come together around whatever qualifying campaign is in front of it, and the clearest of those came in 2008, when Botswana reached the group stage of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics — a mark still referred to as a first for the country at that level. London, Rio and Tokyo followed, each one a qualifying series rather than a tournament actually reached; the Zebras have yet to make it through to the Africa U23 Cup of Nations itself.

Individual moments have had to stand in for team success. Against Zimbabwe's under-23s in 2011, Motsholetsi Singele scored what finished as a consolation goal, one of the few passages from that period anyone still mentions by name. Matches against Eswatini and Seychelles at U23 level, in COSAFA and African qualifying, have not built into anything resembling a rivalry with either.

Home fixtures fall to Gaborone, at the Botswana National Stadium, whose capacity rose to 25,000 after work finished in 2016.