Malta Football Association president Norman Darmanin Demajo is unhappy with the national team’s poor performance in the Euro 2012 qualifiers and expressed concern over the coaches’ decision to systematically leave out players who play abroad.

Talking to The Sunday Times, Mr Darmanin Demajo said the team selection ran contrary to what the Malta Football Association administration was striving to achieve.

“I believe that full time professional players who play in leagues that are better and faster are mentally stronger and more suited to national team duty, but in the past few games we have witnessed the dwindling presence of our ‘foreign’ professionals in the starting line-up,” he said, adding the issue had to be addressed before the team moved into the next competition.

Mr Darmanin Demajo insisted it was not up to him to say whether the positions of the two national team coaches – John Buttigieg and his assistant Carmel Busuttil – were tenable. “They are under a five-year contract which runs till the end of 2014 and so it depends more on them and how they feel given the performances of the national team in the past two years,” he said.

He attributed the disappointing results mainly to lack of professionalism at club level and pointed out that in Estonia’s national squad there are 19 full-time professional players who play in top European leagues. But Mr Darmanin Demajo believes that under the prevailing conditions and the money generated by the domestic game a full-time professional system is not sustainable.

“We need to look beyond our shores and piggy back foreign professional leagues by exporting more local players and help them to get professional contracts abroad,” he said, adding that the MFA would soon embark on a project to work in this new direction.