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Famous Photo Featuring Maltese Boy Crying Tracked Down By Swedish Journalist 27 Years Later

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Back in July 1990, Swedish football photographer Peter Widing took a perfectly-framed photo of a Maltese boy crying as two blonde kids celebrate in sync. Last year, Widing committed suicide, prompting his former colleague and close friend Anders Bengtsson to track down the Maltese boy from their favourite photo. 

Anders detailed his long search for the Maltese boy in a long heartfelt piece on The Guardian

The football tournament which Peter Widing, then 22 years old, had snapped the photo at the 1990 Gothia Cup, where 937 teams from 42 countries took part. Widing had quickly grown very fond of the photo, choosing it as one of nine shots he framed in his office. 

Anders first saw the photo 11 years ago, in 2006. More than a decade had already passed since the original photo was taken, but Anders admitted he couldn’t take his eyes off it. “The picture would not have had the same devastating effect had it been taken a second earlier or later,” Anders said. “It is a moment that requires the blonde boys’ synchronised celebrations, which, in turn, would not have meant anything if it was not for the contrasting boy in tears and tight shirt. It is a work of art that I have loved for the past 11 years.”

“I have looked at the boys so many times and wondered how their lives turned out,” Anders admitted. “Sometimes I said to Peter that we should track them down. But he mainly shrugged and said it would never work. He was a man of few words and coming from him it meant something more like: “I will happily help if we really decide that we are going to do it’.”

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Left: Peter Widing. Right: Anders Bengtsson

When Peter passed away on 29th May 2016, Anders quickly found a new objective.

“It is said that time heals every wound and perhaps the sorrow has diminished, but I do not want to forget him, and the picture has an important part to play,” Anders said. “It still hangs above my desk, and every time I look at the three boys, I think of Peter.”

Finding the two Swedish boys proved lengthy but relatively easy. Eventually, Anders tracked down Mattias Dixner and Markus Kellner. Mattias admitted he only used to play football because his friends did, while Markus had made it to popular Swedish football club AIK but retired after suffering a serious injury. 

Next up for Anders was tracking down the star of the photo himself; the young, distraught, Maltese footballer. 

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Thinking he had reached a dead end mainly due to the sheer amount of time that had passed since that fateful football tournament in 1990, Anders sent one desperate email to BK Häcken, the organisers of the Gothia Cup. “I included as many people as possible whose email addresses I can find on the club website,” Anders explained. “I told them about Markus and Mattias and that it could be a team from either Malta or Germany. “Is there someone who is connected to the Gothia Cup with an extremely good memory?” I ask.”

Only a couple of hours later, Anders did get a reply after all, from the club chairman. “During this period we had a lot of teams from Malta. The teams had different names but almost all the time they had the same sporting leader, Edgar Tonna. If the boy is from Malta then there is a good chance that Edgar can find him.”

Eventually, Anders got in touch with Edgar, who was the one to finally identify the Maltese boy as Kevin Fenech. “He played for Naxxar Lions and was dubbed ‘the Maltese Paul Gascoigne’ in one Swedish newspaper because of his dribbling skills,” Edgar told Anders in an email. “I’ll be in touch again.”

Anders recounts how, hours after getting Kevin Fenech’s number and speaking to him for the very first time, he was already planning a trip to Malta. 

Edgar had a lot of stories to tell Anders, filling him in on the 27-year-old gap between the famous photo and present day. Some were heartwarming, like how one of the boys on the team had met a Chinese girl who 10 years later had moved to Malta. Others were heartbreaking, like how the team’s goalkeeper had died from leukaemia soon after the match, buried in the same shirt he had worn at the Gothia Cup.

Anders recounts the long-awaited moment when he finally met Kevin Fenech. “We hug each other when he arrives. He is short, newly shaved and in good spirits. He is nothing like the chubby boy I have looked at so many times down the years. The 39-year-old Kevin Fenech is in good shape.”

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Kevin’s initial reaction to the photo was hilarious. “Wow, I wasn’t just a little chubby. I was fat!” I guess I was for a few years. You know, I loved sweets and ice cream.”

Anders found out how Kevin, now a father of a young boy who’s also very much into football, actually stopped playing the sport two year after the tournament in Sweden. Fenech picked football up again years later when he was 17, rejoining the Naxxar Lions around the same time he was appointed as an administrator in the Army. Kevin quickly became one of the team’s best players. 

“Yes, I cried a lot,” Kevin told Anders. “My mood was terrible and I cried after every game we lost. But this time it was because we had just conceded. Because we actually won against Bele, 3-1. We won our group and didn’t lose a game before we went out against that other Swedish team … Ytterby? You should have seen me then. I think I cried for two hours after that game. An old Swedish man felt so sorry for me that he bought me a large ice cream.”

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“How Kevin’s, Markus’s and Mattias’s lives will turn out nobody knows,” Anders finished his story. “Peter is proof of that. So I think about how Peter would have loved the sun in Malta. I order a bottle of Amarone, the wine Peter preferred and raise my glass to my lips, pausing before I take a first sip. Quietly I say: ‘It worked out, Widdy. We did it, buddy’.”

Tag someone who’d love to read Ander’s account… and someone who remembers the Gothia Cup!

READ NEXT: Maltese Photographer Learns The Devastating Impacts Of Fake News

Lovin Malta's Head of Content, Dave has been in journalism for the better half of the last decade. Prefers Instagram, but has been known to doomscroll on TikTok. Loves chicken, women's clothes and Kanye West (most of the time).

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