Remember When Spain Beat Malta 12-1 In The 1984 UEFA Euro Qualifier?
In 1983 Malta underwent possibly the most embarrassing moment in its football history – a colossal trashing from the Spanish football team, who beat our boys 12 to 1 in a qualifying match for the UEFA Euro 1984.
Thirty-three years have gone by since the historic game, and this video shows two Spanish football commentators, Lobo Carrasco and Paco Buyo, analysing everything that happened during the game, including all the goals.
Aside from being high up on our most shameful football performances list, this game has gone down in history as one of the most important in the Spanish national football team’s history.
Why? Because in one big sweep they managed to score the exact 11-goal advantage they needed to qualify for the competition. Sounds like everything fell a bit too conveniently into place, right? Who knows. Whether or not the game was corrupted is a very obvious question that comes to mind. But it’s probably one that will remain forever unanswered.
At the time, accusations flying around that Malta threw the game instigated an inquiry into the result by the Malta Football Association, as well as changes made to the national team. The Association admitted that the Maltese team didn’t have the facilities they needed to compete on that playing field.
Cut to 2016 and we may not have seen a similar thrashing since, but Malta’s football performance is at an international level has is officially at its worse. Malta currently ranks 176th in the FIFA World Ranking.
This ranking confirms that Maltese football is in somewhat of a crisis. Add to that Malta’s premiere league player André Schembri highlighting the hopeless situation in a brutally candid interview, where he suggested that a “whole reshuffle” was needed to save Malta for losing games for another 20 years.
So we’re going to keep watching this space and hoping that the next memorable moment in our football history is a positive one. Oh, and if anyone speaks Spanish and can translate what the football commentator dudes are saying, we’d be happy to know too!