Local football clubs are set to benefit from an increase in direct financial support, Malta FA president Norman Darmanin Demajo told reporters during the signing of a renewed sponsorship agreement with Bank of Valletta in Sta Venera, yesterday.
This is the third sponsorship deal agreed between the football association and the bank which will see BOV as official sponsors of the National Leagues and the Super Cup for the next three seasons.
The novelty of the agreement, signed by Darmanin Demajo and treasurer Antoine Portelli, for the MFA, and CEO Tonio Depasquale and Michael Galea, chief operations officer, for BOV, is that for the first time the sponsorship will also cover women’s football.
“It’s a huge satisfaction for the Malta FA that we have renewed our partnership with BOV,” Darmanin Demajo told a news conference.
“At a time when new regulations regarding Financial Fair Play are being introduced by UEFA, the bank’s continued support towards Maltese football could not have come at a better time.
“The agreement, for the first time, includes all divisions of Maltese football and that includes women’s league. This will be a huge fillip for our clubs and will provide the women’s game, in particular, with much-needed support to strengthen their set-up.”
The Malta FA head said that one important feature of the new agreement is that added funds will be allocated to the clubs in future.
“Clubs already benefited from direct funds in previous spon-sorships,” Darmanin Demajo said, “but this time the amount has increased substantially. Administrators will be in a better position to run their clubs efficiently.”
“This has also been the first time for me to conduct negotiations with Tonio Depasquale and I was im-pressed by his understanding of our needs,” he added.
“The MFA-BOV partnership has gelled into a solid bond in the last few years and the bank’s contri-bution has been crucial for us to adopt a different approach and take the game to various locations in the country.”
Depasquale, who is set to retire from his post in the coming weeks, said BOV are proud to have extended their partnership with the MFA and assist in the development of the game here.
“The new sponsorship is the biggest we have as part of our Community Programme,” he said.
“We are hopeful that our support will continue to help towards a better quality of football played as well as in the number of teams participating in Malta FA competi-titions.”
Match-fixing probe
At the end of the news conference, Darmanin Demajo told The Times that the association’s probe into match-fixing allegations involving national team players in the Norway-Malta Euro 2008 qualifier has now reached a decisive stage.
“I can confirm that investigations are continuing. As we all know, in the last few days there were signi-ficant developments into this case,” he said.
“However, at the moment we don’t think it’s appropriate to give any details other than the ones you know but I can assure you the MFA intend to bring to justice anyone proved guilty in this case.
“We are also hopeful of being able to divulge more information by the end of the month.”
During a council meeting last month, Darmanin Demajo said that the MFA had received tran-scripts of the testimony given during a high-profile trial in Bochum that mention the alleged involvement of four Maltese players in match-fixing but only one of them was identified.