“We love football, we love our clubs and we love our villages. Football gives us identity and pride and our dream is to see Maltese football at its best”. This is the continuous demand coming from the Maltese supporters, coming from the fact that during the recent years, the Maltese football hit the downfall and at the moment it seems impossible to bring back the huge atmospheres that we were used to see.
In the recent years, the Maltese supporters remained silent and never had its say in front of the authorities, but a brilliant idea from some few Maltese supporters, resulted in a video about the comparism between the old and modern support in Malta, in order to promote Maltese football and making the people conscious that the Maltese football needs the supporters themselves to make it more attractive.
“This is #numru 12, we are the twelfth player”. The Maltese supporter was the main target of this video and the fact that the supporters need to raise their voice in order to have a better football situation was emphasized by some images from past leagues where the stands in the local stadiums used to be packed, with supporters watching the match even from the touchline! But the main highlight in this video, was the fact that every club in Malta and few from Gozo were represented by a particular supporter, emphasizing the fact that every club is important in Malta and not only the top clubs.
In the recent years, the Maltese football was not attracting huge attendances due to various factors. Most of them are the consequence of the lack of attention by the MFA such as the stadium facilities which are not fully equipped to accomodate the supporters. More over, the league format weakens the league’s strength since the very attention on the league starts to increase only from March and not from the very beginning of the season. These are few concerns from the supporters which they must be changed if the MFA does really has its supporters on its agenda.
It is a good initiative which already have all the Maltese clubs and even few from Gozo ready to tackle this issue with the MFA, so that we can have an attractive football which can once again give us an own identity, the identity of having a football at its highest level and an identity of pasionate supporters around the island. After all, the supporters make football, and not football make the supporters.