MALTA'S NATIONAL STADIUM: NOT JUST A FOOTBALL GROUND, BUT A POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND

Football has always been a very popular sport in the tiny Mediterranean country of Malta, and the history of the game there goes back to the end of the 19th Century. However, because of the country's size and comparatively large population, space to build football facilities is limited though the number of football pitches is increasing due to a scheme involving the Malta FA, clubs and local councils to build pitches across the country. Or, that is the case on the island of Malta, at least; there are no more than a couple of pitches on Malta's smaller neighbour, Gozo.

The vast majority of football pitches in Malta are used for training; there are only a proper few football stadia in the country. International matches (and, before the MFA's accession to full membership of both UEFA and FIFA, Malta FA XI representative matches) were held at the old Empire Stadium in Gzira until it closed in 1981.

Nowadays, they - and most European club competition matches involving Maltese clubs - are generally held at the National Stadium at Ta'Qali, and not in the Maltese capital Valletta as is generally assumed by many people, including the international media. (Valletta does not possess a full-sized football pitch. Any one who has ever been to Valletta will attest to the fact that there simply isn't the room to build one.) The stadium, known in Maltese as the Grawnd Nazzjonali Ta'Qali, or, more commonly, as plain old Ta'Qali, was completed in 1980 and, according to the 2011 UEFA Handbook, can hold 17797 spectators. 

The National Stadium was envisaged as being just one part of a multi-sports complex, and this finally came to fruition in 1993 when a swimming pool, shooting range and gymnasium were built within the bowels of the stadium. This was later augmented when two squash courts and a technical centre were built. More recently, a fan shop and trophy room were built, and a museum is in the pipeline.

In 2002, the East Stand, which had fallen into a state of complete disrepair, was demolished and the Millennium Stand raised in its place. The new stand contained sky boxes, a separate spectator balcony, a café and fitness suite, and also became the new home of the MFA. A media centre, physiotherapy clinic have since been added. A new pitch was laid in 2016, replacing the old one which had been in use since the stadium was opened in 1981.

But, there is a lot more to the National Stadium and its construction than just bare facts and figures. Malta is a country which has always embraced football, and, apart from one's family, politics is possibly the only thing dearer to the heart of the average Maltese, and politics played an immense role in the creation of the stadium and in the years that followed.

There are two main political parties in Malta: the Labour Party (Partit Laburista, or PL, in Maltese) and the Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista, or PN), and relations between the two camps are often strained, to say the least, especially at a local level. Violence has been frequently used by one side against another down the years, and came to head in the 1970s, by which time the PL had taken over the reins of government with Dom Mintoff becoming prime minister in 1971.

Under Mintoff's leadership. the PL undertook a programme of welfare reform, nationalisation and internationalism, which saw Malta become more aligned with countries which had Socialist and Communist governments, and with other nations such as Tunisia and Libya, with which Malta had traditionally strong ties.

 Birkirkara fans ready themselves for a match at the National Stadium against Valletta in 2014 (Photo: Author's own)

There is a story that the construction of the National Stadium was a result of a question posed by the Libyan leader of the time, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had asked how could Libya assist Malta materially, as the governments of both countries had been on good terms for some years and were growing closer, both economically and ideologically. 

Ironically, it was apparently an opposition Nationalist MP, George Bonello-Dupuis, who answered Qaddafi's question by advising him that Libya provide the funds necessary to build a new stadium, and that is exactly what transpired. Bonello-Dupuis was well known in Maltese sporting circles; he had been a sprinter in his youth and had represented Malta in the first edition of the Mediterranean Games in 1951, taking part in the 100 and 200 metres track events. 

Bonello-Dupuis played football for the University FT side, Sliema Wanderers, Melita and Mosta Gunners, and served as Sliema Wanderers president from 1962 until 1987 (when he became Finance Minister in the new Nationalist Party government), and again from 1995 to 1996, so he was well-placed to state the case for improved facilities for Malta's sportsmen and women. He later served as Malta's High Commissioner to the UK, and died in 2019, aged 82.

Perhaps surprisingly, Gaddafi agreed to the proposal, which some claim had been made by the Labour Party government and its Minister for Public Works, Housing and Sport, Lorry Sant and under whose jurisdiction such a project would fall. Work on the National Stadium, which is situated on the site of a former British military airport at Ta'Qali, began in the mid-1970s and the ground was built by the Maltese government, under the guidance of a firm of local architects, with financial assistance from their Libyan counterparts to the tune of US$750000. The construction of the new stadium was seen as the first step in improving Malta's sporting infrastructure as well as providing a showpiece stadium.

Apparently, Poland and West Germany had complained about the state of the pitch at the Empire Stadium after playing European Championship fixtures at the stadium in Gzira, and UEFA were deliberating whether or not to allow the MFA to continue use the old stadium; if they had agreed with the Polish and West German FAs, the MFA would have been left with nowhere to play. In the event, UEFA had dismissed the Polish FA's concerns, but the matter only added urgency to the new stadium's construction.

The stadium was inaugurated on 14 December 1980, and an estimated 25000 people attended the ceremony, which included a march-past by athletes from Malta's sports associations. Demonstrations of various sports and pastimes, including cycling, athletics, sky-diving, a model aircraft "battle", gymnastics, karate, kite-flying and - briefly, football, courtesy of youngsters from the Marsa Sports Centre - were also included in the programme.

But, the MFA was nowhere to be seen at the opening ceremony. They and the then Labour Party government were locked in a long-running dispute concerning various topics at the time, such as the allocation of gate-money. During the inauguration, Sant lambasted the MFA in absentia for refusing to contribute any technical assistance towards building the stadium.

There is a rather curious angle to this dispute between the MFA and the Maltese government of the day, one which was distinctly more political than sporting. Malta was governed by the Labour Party - the Partit Laburista, or PL, in Maltese - at the time of the National Stadium's inauguration, whilst the MFA president, Giuseppe "JJ" Mifsud-Bonnici, also known as Ġoġo, was a Nationalist Party - Partit Nazzjonalista, or PN - supporter.

Mifsud-Bonnici had had a long association with sport before his appointment as association president in 1968; he was national chess champion in 1955, and was St. George's representative on the MFA council before his accession to Maltese football's top job. However, he became embroiled in a dispute with Sant which became more fraught as time went on, to the extent that - after receiving the assent of FIFA and UEFA - the MFA was briefly, and bizarrely, re-named the Main Football Association.


To add to the ill-feeling between the Maltese government and the MFA, Sant and his governmental department had already taken over the running of several football grounds around Malta, from Marsa to Pembroke, from St. Andrew's to Luqa, Mtarfa and Corradino before the construction of the National Stadium.

View of the West Stand at the National Stadium taken from the offices of the Malta Football Association in the Millenium Stand (Photo: Author's own)

After the MFA and the Maltese government finally buried the hatchet and set up a committee to administer gate-money and allocate grounds for football matches, the way was finally clear for the country's football clubs to use the National Stadium and the first MFA-organised football match played at Ta'Qali took place in December 1981, when Zurrieq took on Senglea Athletic in a Maltese Premier League clash. (The Empire Stadium closed its doors for the last time just a few weeks earlier.) It was also the first time that a Maltese football match was played on a grass pitch.

Having said that, there appears to be evidence that the stadium was already in use before then; newspaper reports from May of that year suggest that Valletta Vanguards played Birkirkara St. Joseph SC in the final of a competition organised by the short-lived Malta Football Federation.

Mifsud-Bonnici and the MFA refused to move their offices to the National stadium, and so it went on until he was eventually voted out of office by a majority of the country's football clubs in 1982. He was replaced by George Abela, an ex-candidate for, and a vice-president of, the PL who had married into a family of PN supporters (and was a man who went on to become Maltese president). Abela was widely seen as the man who could steer the MFA back on course after years of squabbling with the Maltese government, and he was the man who oversaw the MFA's move to the National Stadium in 1983. Mifsud-Bonnici, meanwhile, took the position of Honorary President, served on UEFA and FIFA committees, and later became Malta's Chief Justice. He died last year, aged 88.

But, there were still problems between Sant and the MFA, who were allowed to use the National Stadium. The national team are reputed to have turned up at the stadium to play an international match early in the 1980s only to find the gates locked. Sant apparently demanded that the MFA pay a fee in order to use the stadium. Abela met with Prime Minister Dom Mintoff in order to find a solution to the problem, and it was agreed that the MFA pay a yearly rental of 10000 Maltese Lira (over 5000 Euros) in order to use, and have all control over, the National Stadium.

Lorry Sant, meanwhile, continued on as Minister for Works until the PL were voted out of office in 1987; he was later expelled from the party. Sant died of cancer in 1995, and he still divides opinion in Malta to this day. Many Maltese saw, and continue to see, him as a hero for assisting Prime Minister Dom Mintoff in pushing through a policy of welfare state reform and Socialist internationalism in the country. At the same time, he was deeply unpopular within Malta and is still regarded by many as nothing more than a gangster, a corrupt thug who was not above using blackmail and third parties with a propensity towards violence in order to get his way. In 2010, Sant was posthumously found to have violated the human rights of a government employment during the 1970s.

Sliema Wanderers take on Birkirkara at the National Stadium in 2015; the Millenium Stand and the MFA offices are on the far side (Photo: Author's own)

Most controversially of all, but never fully proven, Sant was accused of possessing photographs of Mintoff and his brother's wife - in what was described in an article in the Malta Today newspaper in 2015 as a "compromising dalliance" - and placing them on the Maltese parliament's Speaker of the House's table in a show of theatre in 1989 directed at Mintoff's nephew, Wenzu, who was a sitting MP, and perhaps at Mintoff himself. Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist and avowed PN supporter who was murdered in a car-bomb attack in 2017, was perhaps the first person to openly publish the allegation, the day after Mintoff, a man, like Sant, revered and reviled in equal measure in Malta, and who had turned a blind eye to Sant's activities for so long - in fear of his supposed infidelity being revealed, perhaps? - died in 2012.

But, back to the present day, and plans are apparently afoot to redevelop the stadium further, which is slowly but surely becoming rather ramshackle, especially the North and South Stands, which are rarely used, to the extent that they are, in parts, becoming ever so slightly overgrown. Under FIFA's Goal programme, much of the seating in both stands is being (or has been) replaced, and it may come to pass that both stands will be razed and new stands, situated directly behind the goal-lines, will be built, with a new Futsal mini-stadium being built in the vacant space behind one of the stands. A new technical centre is slated to be built, as are stands for the training pitches.

If the plans come to fruition, the new facilities will surely be a boon to football in Malta; their eventual construction may well be the impetus needed to improve Maltese fortunes on the pitch. What must be beyond dispute is that that they are both sorely needed and long overdue.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Information for the above article was gleaned from a host of different sources: Malta Today, the Times of Malta, the Malta Independent, Facebook and Wikipedia. "Global and Local Football: Politics and Europeanisation on the Fringes of the EU" and Football Cultures and Identies" (both written by Gary Armstrong, with Jon P Mitchell co-writing the former) were consulted, as were Carmel Baldacchino's book "Great Moments in Football" and the MFA's "100th Anniversary of the National League." As ever, any errors or omissions will, of course, be gladly corrected upon notification.