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| the ‘South End Core’ lead the singing |
Malta and Italy have a strange kind of relationship. Italy is kind of like the skinny-jean, funny hair wearing, cigarette smoking, strutting 15-year-old cousin that young Malta really wants to be, but can’t quite pull off. In purely footballing terms, this leads to most Maltese supporting Italian clubs like Juventus and Milan, and cheering the Italian national side on in all the major tournaments. A lot of big country/little country neighbours have love/hate relationships, but Malta’s is definitely more loving than most. I saw one vox pop being conducted on the street by a Maltese newspaper asking Maltese people who they were going to support, a question which if it were asked on the streets of Dublin before a game against England would have led one to fear for the safety of the interviewer.
Anyway, all of which complicated relationship stuff led to a rare full house at the Ta ‘Qali National Stadium for the visit of Italy. The more optimistic Maltese fans were predicting a 1-3 loss, but they actually started quite brightly, buoyed by unambiguously vocal home support. This lasted for around about 10 minutes. Then some sloppy defending led to a soft penalty award, which Mario Balotelli finished in that detached way he has of scoring unstoppable penalties. Malta were unbowed however, and managed to put a couple of half-threatening moves together, one of which led to a penalty of their own. Was this to be the moment Malta stuffed it to the Italian cousins?
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| view from the corporate seats |
In the same way that I absolutely knew Ballotelli would score, I Absolutely Knew that Michael Mifsud would not. Sure enough he chipped the ball weakly to the right of Buffon so that the Italian keeper – diving in much the same way as a chopped giant redwood might – could do little to avoid saving the thing. But Malta came back again, and a few minutes later that man Mifsud hit a rasping shot that Buffon could only divert onto the crossbar. “Game on! We just need to keep it tight for the last minute of the half…”, this, presumably, is what the Maltese coach was thinking in the moments before Italy scored their second. More sloppy defending, a sharply played cutback and Super Mario nonchalantly pokes the ball home again.
Super Mario attracted a lot of boos straight from the start of the game. I guess as the only black man in the stadium he was a particularly visible target, given that the stands are set back a bit from the pitch. Not that I believe there was a racist element to the booing: a young Maltese guy near me did try some monkey noises at one stage, but in a way designed to impress his mates rather than anything else. His mates told him to shut up, and then went over and apologised to Italian fans sat nearby.
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| Mario scores! (early sports photo of the year contender) |
Mario’s irritating habit of scoring goals and winning free kicks certainly did not win him many friends in the crowd, but he got the man of the match award at a stroll. The Italians weren’t great and the Maltese gave them a bit of a scrap, but never really looked like scoring in the second half. A wave broke out at about the 70 minute mark, which is generally the sign of a bored crowd, although as the stadium is never usually full enough for a wave to get right the way around I suppose there was a novelty factor to it.
So a decent game, honour and pride maintained by Malta, whose fans can now go back to cheering on Italy as they march on to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup.
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