Friendly appearance led to Fenech’s omission from squad
Paul Fenech was axed from Malta’s squad for today’s Euro 2012 qualifier against Latvia after he took part in a friendly match for his club only hours after the national team had returned from Israel, Malta coach John Buttigieg revealed yesterday.
“After a 15-hour journey from Israel to Malta, Paul Fenech played a friendly match for his club,” Buttigieg replied when asked to explain his decision to drop the Birkirkara midfielder from his squad on Saturday.
“The game took place about three hours after we arrived back in Malta. This is the only reason why I decided to replace Fenech with Ivan Woods for this match.”
Buttigieg said he had not taken up the matter with Birkirkara coach Paul Zammit after Fenech had informed him that he received a call from his club asking him to play in Friday’s friendly.
Fenech played no part in Malta’s 3-1 defeat to Israel on Thursday and that was probably what prompted Zammit to field the nippy midfielder in Friday’s training match against Division One side Melita.
This latest club-vs-country controversy comes amid widespread reports that newly-elected MFA president Norman Darmanin Demajo is planning to overhaul the national teams’ training scheme after the away qualifier against Croatia in November.
The leading Premier League clubs have long requested that their international players train with the club coaches on a daily basis, as is the standard practice in most countries, and it looks like the new Malta FA administration is prepared to heed their calls.
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Martin Nielsen
Sep 7th 2010, 20:49
Well, if this continues, Buttigieg will probably be fielding players from the first division by the end of his term, just to be have 11 players on the pitch... I am very worried about his uncompromising disciplinarian style, which means Malta is starting a lot of players that should at best be reserves. In this case a player does his best to get match practice and is rewarded with exclusion.
Malta is a small nation with a very limited number of players of decent quality. If the national team's manager doesn't use most of those players, perhaps he is not the right man for that particular job. And perhaps the new MFA administration should consider giving him a different role instead of waiting for his contract to run out. But I really hope he will soon start doing thing differently and use more of Malta's best players.
alan cox
Sep 7th 2010, 12:57
Another player is given the sack by the Malta National Coach! Malta cant afford to leave players that are playing proffessionally abroad and give marching orders to others at the managers whim!! Discipline is must of course but this is going to the ludicrous.How many good players can Malta afford to dicharge .... certainly this is not the way run a National side!!!!! I look forward to the day the current contract runs out....