“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Marsaxlokk have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Marsaxlokk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 37 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christoffer Mafoumbi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Marsaxlokk can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
7.78, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Domantas Šimkus was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Rasmus Lindén has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Marsaxlokk can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Simon Vella on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Nobody at Marsaxlokk will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
14 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
A brace, and Ulises Arias takes the afternoon — 8.63
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ulises Arias provided it, and the 8.63 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 90. Hibernians had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
Squad19 Oct 2026
8 new faces, and Marsaxlokk are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 2‑2, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Ulises Arias has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Hibernians in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Marsaxlokk know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Marsaxlokk has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Marsaxlokk, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Marsaxlokk know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
Domantas Šimkus and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Christoffer Mafoumbi, and the manager let it.
Squad21 Sep 2026
7 new faces, and Marsaxlokk are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 1‑2, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Oualid El Hasni's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Successful dribbles: 14. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Christoffer Mafoumbi’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Marsaxlokk needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Marsaxlokk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 4 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at Marsaxlokk until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
The offer from Naxxar Lions for James Kirby was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Matthew Calleja Cremona reports back to Marsaxlokk with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Thiago is living that version at Marsaxlokk, and it tends to show in the first month.
Marsaxlokk asked and Floriana said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.