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.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Kurt Vella has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Tarxien Rainbows can pretend not to have heard.
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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Marco Grech has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
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.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Ian Pisani has come out of that comparison in the side, and Tarxien Rainbows have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Every squad is half players the manager chose and half players he inherited. Patrick Schmidt was chosen, the man who chose him has gone, and he starts again from nothing under the next one.
In brief
The dugoutAndreas Vella knocks on the manager's door
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Tarxien Rainbows, and it is not being withdrawn.
Position 10 and 10 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Birkirkara left with the points after a 2‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Patrick Schmidt was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.41. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad7 Dec 2026
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Kian Vella is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
8 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Marko Musulin 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 no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Lawrence Attard has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Tarxien Rainbows are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sheldon Mizzi 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.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Tarxien Rainbows were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
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.