Marked for David Lienhart
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Jun 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market28 Jun 2027
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Tarxien Rainbows have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad28 Jun 2027
David Lienhart is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 May 2027
Luke Anthony Borg damages knee ligaments — 30 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 30 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad31 May 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. David Lienhart is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad31 May 2027
Patrick Schmidt 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Apr 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Luke Anthony Borg
74 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Tarxien Rainbows lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad19 Apr 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tarxien Rainbows this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Apr 2027
David Lienhart falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad8 Feb 2027
Andreas Vella: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Tarxien Rainbows have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Words at Tarxien Rainbows training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kwasi Donsu is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Adrian Cauchi is the division's best young player this month
At 17 he has spent a month being better than everybody his age in the league, which is a different and harder thing than one good afternoon. Tarxien Rainbows will try very hard not to make too much of it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market1 Feb 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market1 Feb 2027
The bid was some way short and Tarxien Rainbows did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Kwasi Donsu falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Miguel D'Alessandro 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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
5 new faces, and Tarxien Rainbows 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.