Football is the most popular sport in Burkina Faso. Approximately 35% of the people in Burkina Faso are considered association football fans. Neighbouring countries with a relative comparable percentage are Benin, Mali and Niger.
The national association can look back on recent developments with a great deal of pride. Reaching the semi-finals of the African Cup of Nations on home soil in 1998, reaching the knockout stage for their first FIFA World Youth Championship in 2003, and appearances at two final competitions of the CAF U-17 Cup, as well as third place at the FIFA U-17 World Championship in Trinidad and Tobago in 2001 are the country's outstanding achievements at international level. The nations most famous players include Kassoum Ouegraogo, nicknamed Zico, who had his most successful seasons with Espérance de Tunis before ending his career in Germany, Siaka Ouattara, who spent his entire career with Mulhouse in France, and Moumouni Dagano, who was voted best African player in Belgium in 2001, when he played for the Belgian side Genk. He later went on to play for the French side Guingamp before transferring to another French team, FC Sochaux in 2005. Burkina Faso received an unexpected free pass into the group stage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification process, when their opening round contestant, the Central African Republic, withdrew from the competition. This gave the West Africans, who were at that stage ranked 14th on the continent, the certainty that their name would be in the hat when the Preliminary Draw for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany was made. They got off to a flying start, beating Ghana 1-0 in their opening match and laying down a marker for their Group 2 adversaries South Africa, Cape Verde Islands, Congo DR and Uganda. The victory train began to come off the rails with two defeats to Cape Verde, and with a record of two wins and three losses, Burkina Faso were up against it at the half-way stage. Frenchman Bernard Simondi took over the coaching reins from Ivica Todorov and made the team harder to beat at home, even recording wins over South Africa and Congo DR, but in the end it was not quite enough, and the likes of Abdoulaye Cisse, Moumouni Dagano, and Wilfred Sanou went no further in the competition.
History until independence in 1960 Although football was already practiced at the turn of the century in the British colony of Gold Coast (now Ghana), this sport did not appear until the mid-1930s in the area of today's Burkina Faso. In 1932, the French colony of Upper Volta was divided among the neighboring colonies, so that the two main cities Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso then belonged to the colony of Ivory Coast. Bobo-Dioulasso, as a central commercial city meeting point of cultures and new ideas, was the starting point for the development of football in the country; The teams consisted mainly of French military personnel, missionaries, colonial officials and merchants, workers and employees from the neighboring colonies Gold Coast, Guinea, Senegal or French Sudan (now Mali). Especially the latter group was not only in Bobo-Dioulasso - especially those from French Sudan -, but throughout French-speaking Africa an important factor for the early development of football.Peter Alegi: African soccerscapes. How a continent changed the world’s game. Ohio University Press, Athens 2010,
1935 was the first team Togo-Daho, which was later merged into Racing Club Bobo-Dioulasso, founded by the director of the French trading company Compagnie Française de la Côte d'Ivoire (CFCI), on special occasions until the war mobilization in 1939 against the team the French military base. A team of the Catholic Mission founded by Father Germain Nadal became Jeanne d'Arc Bobo-Dioulasso in 1946. Football was virtually unknown in Ouagadougou and the territories that were divided in the division of Upper Volta Niger and French Sudan until the 1940s, although occasionally in Ouagadougou games of members of the Association sportive voltaïque (ASV) and a French military team were discharged.
Only after the Second World War and the restoration of Upper Volta as a colony in 1947 clubs were founded in the capital, which had their origins in various cultural, ethnic, religious groups or other organizations of society. For example, newcomers from Dahome, now Benin, the club Modèle Sport (later AS Ouagadougou) and the Christian cleric Ambroise Ouédraogo founded the team Charles Lwanga, the predecessor of ASFA Yennenga Ouagadougou. This rapid development of football required the creation of organizational structures; The Frenchman Lucien Sangan founded a football district within the sporting administration of French West Africa. For the first time, official games took place on a sports field surrounded by seccos (a kind of straw walls) on the site of today's cinema Ciné Sanyon. Only officially registered club in Ouagadougou was at this time the team Modèle Sport, who had to travel to games after Bobo-Dioulasso, which in turn sent a team to a tournament in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) in 1949, in which the players had to play in part barefoot.
From 1950, football in Upper Volta changed from the elitist enjoyment of a few city dwellers to a popular sport practiced throughout the country. In many cities of the territory new associations were founded and in 1950 the football district based in Bobo-Dioulasso decided to join the Association of French West Africa, the Ligue d'AOF de Football, that of the Fédération Française de Football (FFF), the Federation of the Motherland France belonged. There were numerous clubs throughout the country. The infrastructure developed slowly, however, but it came to the opening of the municipal stadiums in Bobo-Dioulasso (1952) and Ouagadougou (1953 or 1958 depending on the source). While games were held mainly locally at the local level in the 1940s, there were more frequent inter-colonial encounters during the 1950s as part of friendlies or competitions organized by major West African trading companies. In addition, Upper Voltaic clubs participated in 1952 at the Coupe d'AOF, the Cup competition French West Africa, where they were, however, mostly inferior. It was not until 1958 that ASF Bobo-Dioulasso celebrated some success in this tournament. Among the big players of ASF at that time was Seydou Bamba. In the mid-1950s, Ouagadougou also founded its own district
Beginning The Federation Fédération Burkinabè de Football (FBF), founded in 1960, under the name Fédération voltaïque de football (FVF), has been a member of the World Federation FIFA and the African Federation CAF since 1964.
According to the statutes adopted in 2002, the FBF is subordinate to the Ministry of Sport and Leisure (Ministère des Sports et des Loisirs). The supreme body is the General Assembly (Assemblée Générale), which meets once a year and is composed of representatives of the leagues and associations, honorary members and the members of the Executive Bureau (Bureau Exécutif). The executive office is elected for a four-year term and consists of three vice-presidents and one secretary-general, in addition to the president.
Maxime Ouédraogo was the first president of the FVF after independence until his detention in 1963 in connection with his work as Minister of Labor. Under its successor, Adrien Tapsoba, the association adopted new statutes and became a member of FIFA and CAF, but after conflicts over the creation of new regional leagues, the federation was disbanded politically in 1965 and an interim leadership under Naon Charles Somé was instituted until the overthrow of the President Maurice Yaméogo was in office a year later. Adrien Tapsoba rejoined the association for a further 14 years before being replaced by Saye Zerbo's coup d'état, led by Michel Ilboudo, after a coup d'état by the National Football Team (CNCF). Another coup d'état in 1983, which brought Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo to power, put a quick end to the committee. This turbulent phase in the history of the country culminated in 1983 in the revolution of Thomas Sankara, whose vision of a new society did not want to exclude football and its structures. But a planned tribunal populaire de la révolution, before which the former leaders of the association should answer, never took place. Under Sankara, the name of the country was changed in Burkina Faso, union presidents at the time of the revolution were Nurukyor Claude Somda and Pierre Guigma. Under the leadership of Félix Tiemtarboum, Souley Mohamed, and Boureima Badini, who voluntarily resigned in 1997, Blaise Compaoré, who put himself in power in 1987, became a unique association in the history of the association, now called Fédération Burkinabè de Football. Reason was the poor performance during qualifying for the 1998 World Cup. Also, his successor Honoré Traoré declared his resignation in 2002, as well Seydou Diakité in July 2007, who wanted to allow the association a fresh start, after the national selection in qualifying for Africa Cup 2008 had disappointed. In addition, there had been conflicts with the Ministry of Sport regarding the hosting of international games and budget overdrafts for international travel.
After a transitional phase led by Didier Ouédraogo Zambendé Théodore Sawadogo was elected on January 12, 2008 with 84 to 60 votes against Lt. Col. Yacouba Ouédraogo to the new Association President.
On April 20, 2010, the association announced that because of high debts, which were estimated by local media at 400 million CFA francs (about 610,000 euros), the accounts were blocked and the premises were confiscated.
Since March 10, 2012, Colonel Sita Sangaré is the successor of Sawadogo. He was elected with 95.9% of the votes - 203 out of 213 - to the Association President.
National team The first international match of the Upper Voltaic selection was played on April 13, 1960 in the Jeux de la Communauté in Madagascar and ended with a 5-4 victory against Gabon. In the squad were 15 players from six different clubs. In the following years the team took part in tournaments of the Jeux de l'Amitié in Abidjan (1961) and Dakar (1963). Upper Volta failed to qualify for the 1965 All-Africa Games and in 1968 took part for the first time in the qualifiers for the African Cup of Nations, but lost to Algeria and Mali. In the early years of the rule of President Sangoulé Lamizana (in office from 1966 to 1980) football was rated as subordinate.Joseph Bonzi: L’ombre de 98. In: Afrique Football. Spécial CAN Mali 2002. Évry 2002, S. 42
In the 1970s, the rise of private entrepreneurship in the country led to an increased involvement in football, and the policy was set with the establishment of a Sports Department in 1971. When participating in the 1973 Pan African Games in Lagos (Nigeria) Obervolta lost under coach Bernard Bayala all three games, but was considered by observers as one of the great revelations of the tournament. During the engagement of the German Otto Pfister Obervolta was able to participate as a replacement for the Ivory Coast in 1978 for the first time at an African Cup and draw attention despite three defeats in the preliminary round internationally.