After the courageous performance in Zagreb against one of the strongest Croatian sides over the last 5 years, the expectations around the Maltese National team were high and it was actually a must for the local players to perform well and create goal scoring opportunities, if not even grabbing at least a point from this match. Unfortunately, this did not happen and after a strong 10 minutes, Norway started to take over the midfield; when they scored twice in few minutes, the match was already over. According to the Norwegian press, this is theor weakest national team in the last 5/6 years as they do not have any top players, where before they had John Arne Riise and Morten Gamst Pedersen. Ironically enough, their "superstar’ is 15 year old Martin Odegaard, who despite being called up for the trip to Malta, was not featured in the match.
Pietro Ghedin started this match with a 5-3-2 formation, with Michael Mifsud and Andre Schembri, who probably was the best Maltese on the pitch apart from Hogg, upfront. Roderick Briffa, who returned from an injury, started as right back instead of the suspended Steve Borg who was sent off in the match against Croatia. Malta started brightly but after around 10 minutes, they started to make mistakes upfront, exposing the defence and consequently conceding two goals from quick counter attacks. If both goals did not terminate the match, the third goal conceded early in the second half had put an end to an improbable Maltese comeback. The Maltese did not showed their character and their reaction was very poor, in fact the second half was very quiet with Norway controlling the possession of the ball most of the time.
At the end of the match, Malta’s captain, Michael Mifsud, said that he and his team mates now have to move on and forget this match and concentrate on next Monday’s match when they will host Italy who are at the top of the group joined by Croatia. He added that this match should be used only as a reference to avoid the many mistakes done during this match especially at the back. On the other hand, the Norwegian coach retained himself very satisfied by his team’s performance and he is hoping that this performance together with the result will boost Norway in order to follow their aim of reaching a play off place as third-place in the group.