It’s thumbs down on Muscat’s Premier league from the pundits

Why change something that is not broken? The jury of football fans and pundits is surely out on a proposed Premier League shake-up that has heads scratching as to the radical change top-flight football in Malta might yet see.

Earlier in the week, UEFA gave its green light to a new proposed league format that the top-flight association Malta Premier League and the Malta FA submitted for approval.

The format submitted by MPL chairman Joseph Muscat, the former prime minister, consists of having the Premier League championship formed by 12 teams and playing two separate rounds of football, both bookended with a split league of top six and bottom six teams, to head into a play-off or ‘final four’ tournament.

But claims that the complex league format can spark better attendance figures at Premier League matches have yet to be proven true.

Pundits and former footballers who see the classic league format as played in the British Premier or Italian Serie A as the template for football teams, fear that the added complexity adds nothing new to Maltese football.

The proposed format

The Premier League currently consists of two rounds in which every team plays each opponent twice, as a kind of ‘home’ and ‘away’ match. The club with the most points is crowned as champion. When two teams are tied in points, a decider match for champions or relegation is played.

Under Muscat’s proposed plan – surprisingly endorsed by the 14-team Malta Premier League association – 12 teams will compete in two phases, a winter championship and a spring championship. In the first phase, the 12 teams face each other in a round-robin format. At the end of the first round, the championship splits in two sections, featuring the top six teams in one and the remaining six teams in the other.

The first-placed team in the top six section will be declared the winner of the winter championship, while the bottom two teams in the bottom six section will face relegation.

The league however will resume with a second phase, the spring championship, where all teams again start from scratch, with no points carried from the winter championships. The same format of the winter championship will again be adopted, with all teams facing each other in a round-robin format, before being split into two sections of six teams each.

If the top-placed side in the spring championship is the same as the one that topped the winter championship, they will be declared Malta champions. If there are different teams winning each championship, UEFA’s proposal of introducing a play-off final or final four will come to effect.

Thumbs-down

But the format has failed to find credible voices supporting the dismemberment of the current league format.

“It will absolutely not help increasing attendance at matches. The format we had worked in the past and continues to work,” says journalist Antvin Monseigneur.

Antvin Monseigneur

“This format absolutely crushes any incentive to attend matches as a supporter, and to strive as a team during the first stage of the season. Why would they attend when there is nothing to play for? Whoever proposed the format is totally distanced from the local football scene,” he said.

Monseigneur also said the format will do nothing to elevate footballing quality in the country. “It will kill football. Games will increase, therefore foreign players will also increase, and the quality of Maltese football players will also decrease,” he said.

The seasoned TVM sports journalist and commentator Sandro Micallef also remains unsure as to whether the format is itself sustainable beyond its opening ‘winter’ round.

Sandro Micallef

“I think it will attract supporters to the stadium during the first season. It remains to be seen whether this will remain, and whether the format is sustainable. There are a lot of question marks on how it will work.”

What is sure is that no new league format will raise footballing levels in the country. “We are stuck in a status quo, and we will remain there,” Micallef said.

Even former football champions Carmel Busuttil and Joe Brincat think the simple Premier format that has been around for the larger part of footballing history, needs no complications added to it.

“I don’t really follow Maltese football much anymore, but I have to say that I cannot grasp as to why a simple football league format has to be rendered more complex,” said Carmel Busuttil, the former Malta international who in 1988 joined Belgian side Genk as club captain and was the team’s top scorer for three consecutive seasons.

Carmel Busutill

“As we can see, this year’s league championship has naturally come to a decider format with Floriana and Ħamrun separated by mere points and heading to a final clash. The same can be said for the teams facing relegation. So, something as simple as a championship league format should not be changed for no reason at all.”

The former Malta and Ħamrun Spartans champion Joe Brincat also suggested the proposed MPL format was too complex for what is currently a simple league format.

Joe Brincat

“If we want better attendances at the football stadium, my suggestion would be to reduce the number of teams playing in the Premier. I think it is currently overloaded with 14 teams. I’d say take the number of teams playing down to 10, if not eight, and have them play three rounds. Sometimes certain football teams from small villages have too few fans to bring to the stadium, but in a Floriana-Ħamrun clash you have massive support. So have them play three rounds for guaranteed gate money.”