Making the Maltese Cross: Football on a Small Island

Abstract

Even in a winner-loser culture that is football, it is in the interests of the good of the game that frequent losers sometimes win. At the level of world competition small nations know their chances of victory against larger ones are negligible, but their fans will expect the occasional drawn game and certainly a victory over countries of similar standing. When such logic does not realise itself, problems set in; the spectators become disconsolate. As we write in 1998, the followers of the Maltese national side are some of the most disconsolate fans in the world. A World Cup qualifying campaign was concluded in September 1997 with Malta having lost all 12 games, conceded 37 goals and scored only two. Consecutive 6–0 defeats at the hands of Yugoslavia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic might have been expected, but losing home and away to the Faroe Islands (population 43,000) was not.