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.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
The dugout25 Feb 2030
Ryan Andrews is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Tarxien Rainbows, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
Nobody at Tarxien Rainbows 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.
In brief
The dugoutMalcolm Pace asks for a word with the manager
That is the business done at Tarxien Rainbows 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.
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.
Nobody at Tarxien Rainbows 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.
The message was aimed at the stands as much as the dressing room: Ángel Valverde plays, and the argument is closed until the manager decides otherwise.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Tarxien Rainbows have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The offer from Naxxar Lions for Miguel Spiteri 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Patrick Schmidt and Tarxien Rainbows agree another 3 years.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Patrick Schmidt’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Tarxien Rainbows.
Squad8 Oct 2029
Kevin Vella 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.
7.94, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Tarxien Rainbows had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad8 Oct 2029
A place in the month's best eleven for Kevin Vella
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Kevin Vella has come out of that comparison in the side, and Tarxien Rainbows have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Tarxien Rainbows people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 5 arrived, 0 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Kwasi Donsu has his answer from Tarxien Rainbows; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Tarxien Rainbows people have started saying his name in the past tense.
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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Ryan Andrews and Tarxien Rainbows agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Patrick Schmidt signs something — a contract at Tarxien Rainbows or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nobody at Tarxien Rainbows 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.
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ryan Cilia and Tarxien Rainbows agree another 3 years.
Signed today, seen by nobody for years, and one of them may one day be the reason the club exists. That is the whole of the argument for an academy, and it is a good one.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Patrick Schmidt signs something — a contract at Tarxien Rainbows or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
In brief
The dugoutMalcolm Pace has become a man the manager trusts
The dugoutRyan Andrews knocks on the manager’s door
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Tarxien Rainbows will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Patrick Schmidt signs something — a contract at Tarxien Rainbows or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The window is open, and with it the only month of the year when a supporter’s hopes are limited by nothing but arithmetic. The board know the arithmetic; the supporters know the hopes.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Tarxien Rainbows will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
Commercial news is the news nobody sings about and everything else is paid for with. The board will call it a partnership; the accountants will call it the difference between this squad and a smaller one.
Nobody at Tarxien Rainbows 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Érico Júnior and Tarxien Rainbows agree another 2 years.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
Kwasi Donsu 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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Ryan Andrews and Tarxien Rainbows agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Position 5 on 36 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Patrick Schmidt provided it, and the 9.35 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Miguel Spiteri will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Tarxien Rainbows the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Mosta have kept their man, and Tarxien Rainbows go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
At 15 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
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.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Alan Mangion after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Kevin Vella is 16, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.
7 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
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.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
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.
The dugout30 Oct 2028
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Alan Mangion to a room that had heard them before.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Nobody at Tarxien Rainbows 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.
Successful dribbles: 9. 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.
Chances created: 4. Nothing on the scoresheet and everything in the match: the pass before the pass, over and over, until the defence stopped guessing right.
3 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Malcolm Pace will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Tarxien Rainbows escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
Julian Bugeja, 16, plays like he has been here for years — 8.22
A mark of 8.22 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 16-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
He is 16 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Ryan Andrews 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kwasi Donsu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.