Borg vs Buttigieg: Inside the Malta FA Feud Dividing Parish and Progress
Borg vs Buttigieg: The Quiet Power Struggle Reshaping Maltese Football’s Backyard
By Hot Malta Staff
Valletta’s Republic Street was still yawning itself awake last Saturday when the first WhatsApp voice-note landed: “U iva, who’s really running the Malta FA – Alex or Johann?” By the time the kiosks had clipped the weekend papers to their rails, the question had ricocheted from Sliema coffee shops to Gozitan farmhouses, proving once again that on this island a spat between two men in blazers can still feel like a village festa gone wrong.
Alex Borg, 47, the Malta Football Association’s deputy president and longtime tal-Qormi committee stalwart, and Johann Buttigieg, 56, the association’s general secretary and former national-team striker, have spent decades orbiting the same tight constellation of Maltese football. To outsiders they are simply “the guys in suits” behind the much-maligned national team; inside the locker rooms, band clubs and parish bars they are rival standard-bearers for two philosophies of Maltese identity itself.
Borg’s people paint him as the grassroots gatekeeper, the man who still drives to fourth-division pitches in a dusty Kia Sportage, remembers every club president’s nickname and can tell you which village produced the best ħobż biż-żejt at last season’s derby. “Football is community, not paperwork,” he told supporters after last month’s MFA council meeting in Ta’ Qali, a sentence that could have been lifted from a Labour Party 1976 manifesto. His critics, however, whisper that Borg treats the MFA like a fiefdom, rewarding loyalty with committee seats and sponsorship crumbs.
Buttigieg, by contrast, is the sleek technocrat who once scored against Real Madrid in the European Cup and returned from a coaching stint in the United States speaking of “metrics” and “fan engagement.” Appointed general secretary in 2016, he promised to drag Maltese football into the data age: GPS vests for Under-17s, a women’s league that actually pays for its own buses, a streaming deal that lets Gozitan exiles in Melbourne watch their village team on a Tuesday night. Supporters hail him as the first administrator to treat Maltese football like a product worth exporting; detractors mutter that he is too cosy with foreign consultants and has forgotten the smell of liniment in village dressing rooms.
The current stand-off centres on the proposed €18 million “National Football Campus” – a sprawling complex of pitches, rehab clinics and, crucially, a 3 000-seat stadium earmarked for the Malta women’s team and the burgeoning e-sports league. Buttigieg wants the project fast-tracked through a public-private partnership with a consortium that includes a Danish artificial-turf giant. Borg, backed by a coalition of district clubs, insists the money should first shore up leaking roofs in local clubhouses and raise the € 70 weekly match-fee for amateur referees. When the council voted 28-24 to delay the campus last month, Buttigieg’s allies accused Borg of “fear-mongering,” while Borg’s camp circulated grainy photos of the general secretary dining at a waterfront restaurant with the Danish investors – a scene straight out of a Maltese soap opera.
Why does any of this matter beyond the blazer brigade? Because on an island where 42 000 registered players (more than 8 % of the population) still measure journeys in football grounds rather than kilometres, the fight embodies a deeper rift between modernity and tradition, between the Malta that wants to sell itself as a slick Mediterranean hub and the Malta that still defines itself by parish boundaries and festa fireworks. The same tension plays out in debates over cruise-ship quotas and high-rise towers, but football offers the most emotional theatre.
Already, the ripple effects are visible. Sliema Wanderers’ women’s team threatened to boycott last weekend’s derby after hearing that campus funds might be frozen; youth coaches in Żabbar have started a petition titled “Pitch Today, Campus Tomorrow,” while elderly supporters in Naxxar joke that they will need a passport to visit the new complex. Even the village band clubs have picked sides: the Għaqda Mużikali Sant’ Anna in Qormi has scheduled an extra march past Borg’s house every evening this week, while the Sliema Scouts brass section serenaded Buttigieg after Tuesday’s council meeting.
Neither man shows signs of retreating. Sources close to Borg say he is prepared to force an extraordinary general meeting in September; Buttigieg’s allies hint at a strategic alliance with foreign investors who could bypass the MFA entirely and build a privately-run academy. Between now and then, expect more fiery Facebook lives, more whispered allegations of “foreign interference,” and at least one village feast where the two men end up sharing the same pew at High Mass, smiling through gritted teeth while the incense swirls overhead.
In the end, the real victor may not be Borg or Buttigieg but the Maltese habit of turning every administrative squabble into national theatre. Because if we can argue this passionately about grass seed and floodlights, perhaps the game that once gave us Ġużi Urpani and Michael Mifsud still has a pulse after all. The ball, as they say, is round – and on this island, so is every argument.
