“The feeling doesn’t change – it doesn’t go away. And I’ve always said, if that feeling ever goes away, that would be my sign to stop playing football,” Emma Xuereb expressed, who has been part of the national team for 16 years.

“It’s obviously a huge honour, every time you step on the pitch, every time you put on your kit, every time you hear the national anthem, it’s very emotional,” Shona Zammit said.

“Whether we’re playing a friendly or a decisive match, they all give us the same amount of pride, the amount of joy, and obviously in that moment all the sacrifices you’ve had to make in the last years don’t matter anymore.”

Meanwhile, while they all had no choice but to join a boys’ team when they were still young due to the absence of girls’ teams in Malta, Janice Xuereb also explained how she had to deal with being called names, such as “tomboy”.

Emma also opened up on being excluded by the boys at a young age, only to earn their respect once she had scored her first goal and proven how good she was at the sport.

They also brought up the challenges arising from lack of resources and gender imbalance within the sport.

“Our training sessions always had to happen after the men’s training sessions, sometimes even starting to train at 9pm,” Emma explained.

“It’s a challenge in Malta because there isn’t a lot of investment in women’s football. We’re always limited in the aspect of our level of football, how high can it go? If it were up to me, I’d be willing to train twice daily, even three times,” she said.

“There also weren’t a lot of coaches involved in women’s teams, I was even in coaches where we didn’t even have an assistant coach.”

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