When the national football team players enter the dressing room for tonight’s match against Bulgaria, their kits will be lined up, hanging and ready to be worn, but this was not always the case in the game’s long history on the island.

Eighty years ago, Maltese football players took to the ground wearing borrowed collared shirts or itchy woollen tops hand-knitted by their wives.

Kenneth Formosa, 48, of Naxxar, has a collection of Maltese national football gear – in all shapes and styles – from 1938 right up to 2015. His collection is missing just one shirt: that from the Maltese team of 1957. “That was a very important year for Maltese football,” he points out.

On February 24, 1957, Malta played against Austria; Malta lost, but only by a whisker, scoring two goals to Austria’s three. The respectable defeat made the Maltese crowd euphoric, and patriotic sentiment ran high.

“It was the game that made it possible for an official national team to be set up. From that game on, our team was no longer called ‘Pick Malta’,” he said.

It was the game that made it possible for an official national team to be set up

At the start of that 1957 game, during the players’ line up, the Austrian national anthem was played, followed by the British one (Malta was a British colony then). Maltese spectators crowding the Gżira football ground would have none of it. They stood up and started singing the Maltese national anthem “so loud that they drowned out the British anthem”, he said.

Mr Formosa became visibly emotional as he described the moment while leafing through an original programme of the game. “It is why I would like to make an appeal to anyone who knows of a 1957 shirt to please get in touch.”

He is passionate about the game and has all sorts of memorabilia related to Maltese football. The first kits are rather historic. Because in the 1930s and 1940s the Malta Football Association had no money, footballers very often played for Malta providing their own club shirts but sewed on the Malta badge.

Initially, shirts were like rugby ones. Shoes were straps of leather and the players wore a cap. Goalkeepers fared far worse: their shirts were hand-knitted by their wives, which meant that when it rained they had to chase the ball in sodden woollen tops. Mr Formosa’s collection also includes gear from all the international footballers who won the Golden Ball, including Fabio Cannavaro, Franz Beckenbauer, Michael Owen, Zinedine Zidane and Kaka. His is the only collection of its kind in the world.

He is a reference point when it comes to Maltese football kits and has been contacted by collectors from as far away as Brazil and Azerbaijan. Maltese players are very happy to hand him any of their memorabilia, knowing it will be in safe hands.

His collection is priceless but, to Mr Formosa, it is not about money. “My wish is that, one day, maybe with the help of EU funds, a Maltese football museum will be set up. I would then make all my collection completely available to the museum,” he said.

He already has a place in mind: the derelict stadium in Gżira. He hastens to point out that his own premisese are running out of space.

“My wife and two children have drawn the line; I cannot encroach on the living quarters with my football memorabilia,” he quipped. He has been collecting it for the last 33 years.

“A British tourist stopped me in Buġibba to ask directions to Malta’s museum of football. I had to tell him there was no such thing, but the pang of pain I felt in my heart at that moment stayed with me and decided that I would contribute for there to be one,” Mr Formosa said.

Do you have the 1957 shirt? If so, please contact Mr Formosa on www.maltafootballcollection.com.

UEFA’s 1950 Laws of the Game.

Malta’s substitution role

Before the 1950s, when a player was injured during a football game he would not be replaced. It was thanks to Manuel Calleja that UEFA introduced the substitution rule.

In 1949, Mr Calleja wrote to UEFA and suggested that when a footballer is injured, he is substituted.

Mr Calleja’s amended copy of UEFA’s Laws of the Game is among the football memorabilia in Kenneth Formosa’s collection.