Football clubs vote for former PM Joseph Muscat to head their association

Former prime minister Joseph Muscat will head the Malta Professional Football Clubs Association after his name was floated by several clubs.

The association was formed last year to represent premier league clubs and is autonomous from the Malta Football Association. It comprises 14 clubs from Malta's top-tier football league.

Members met on Tuesday afternoon to discuss Muscat's prospective appointment to head the association after Santa Lucija FC president Robert Micallef stepped down from the post recently.

Around two-thirds of the clubs were in favour of the appointment, while the rest voiced their concern over Muscat’s political baggage and controversial past. One of the dissenting clubs was Valletta.

Proponents of Muscat argued that he would help elevate the MPFCA’s profile to the next level thanks to his contacts, negotiation skills and good relations with the MFA, according to reports by the Times of Malta and NET’s Replay.

MPFCA members want to move away from having the association chaired by a club president and instead appoint someone external to the clubs. Sources said Muscat's name has been informally discussed and he has been sounded out.

The association looks to hive off responsibility for running the premier league from the MFA, in order to create a model similar to that in Italy and England among others.

Muscat stepped down from prime minister in January 2020 after his right-hand man, Keith Schembri, was implicated in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia by alleged mastermind Yorgen Fenech.

The former prime minister is not alien to sport and football in particular. In his final speech to Labour supporters, he had expressed his interest in going into the sports sector.

Muscat, an avid AC Milan supporter, had said the sector is very close to his heart, and wants to “contribute towards improving it.”

He said that he will be working on a project which has a vision of seeing young Maltese people achieving international success in sport. “I look forward to a time when national pride in sports is recognised by all,” he had said in 2020.

Soon after, Muscat was also tipped to take a Maltese team into the Italian ‘third division’ league Serie C, a plan formulated by the MFA.

The plan was to create a Maltese football team with at least 10 Maltese nationals within its ranks to compete in the professional Italian league at Serie C level.

MFA President Bjorn Vassallo had openly declared his intention to create two teams that will be playing in Italian football. The second team would be an U-19 selection that will compete in the Campionato Nazionale Dante Berretti and will have around 20 young Maltese players in the squad.

However, these plans were scuppered when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.