That night in Spain

Day -779. WorldCup2018.

Do you remember when Spain had to beat Malta by 11 goals to qualify for the 1984 European Championship Finals? It's not a World Cup story, I know, but it is necessary to have one more Malta story, as a continuation of yesterday's post and in defiance of Tony Soprano. The Spain-Malta story also has a comical sequel, pointed out to my by one of those friends with whom humour in football was found many times over the years.

In December 1983 Spain had to beat Malta by a difference of 11 goals to qualify for France '84 and eliminate Holland on goal difference. This, I believe, was the last time that the final round of qualifying matches were not played at the same time, thus eliminating the possibility of teams knowing what result they needed. In the match played in Malta earlier in qualifying, Spain had come back from 2-1 down in the second half to win 3-2. Unfortunately, I wasn't at that match. When I looked it up, I found that it was played a day before my birthday and maybe I was busy eating chocolate cake somewhere, as a warm up to the even better chocolate cake I was going to eat the next day. But there was still something quite unforgettable about that match. The local TV station (the only one) would show recordings of Malta's matches in the evening. The commentator was the wonderful Fr. Hilary Tagliaferro. He presented a sports programme on TV every weekend, he was the football commentator, he worked for many years for the Malta FA. And he was a priest, admired by many. Now there's a story.

Fr. Hilary's excitable commentary when Malta scored their second goal is quiet legendary. I cannot find any footage of it, but in my head I can hear: goal...goal...goal...GOAL!!!!! Apart from the exuberant commentary it was a great result: "we only lost 3-2".

Even though we didn't expect a similar result in the return match, nobody, including the Dutch, really feared that Spain would get their required 11 goals. The 11 became 12, when Malta had the audacity to score. At 3-1 at half-time, there didn't seem much hope that Spain would redeem themselves in the Euros after a disappointing performance as the host country of the 1982 World Cup. But the goals kept coming and coming. And the final result, 12-1, was as much a triumph of a massive proportions for Spain as it was the ultimate embarrassment for Malta.

Inevitably, conspiracy theories abounded and still do. There really only was one theory, and it would take no genius to guess what it was. I stress, it was just a theory. No evidence of any wrongdoing was ever uncovered. The following year the Malta FA hired a non-Maltese coach, Guentcho Dobrev to take over the task of rebuilding some pride in Maltese football.

The Maltese goalkeeper on that fateful night was John Bonello. One would imagine that he became the punch line of many jokes in Spain. Indeed, Spanish friends, told me years later that he was quite the legend in Spain for his non-heroics that night. At the end of his career you would think that he would not want to be reminded of his unwanted status in Spain. But not our John. He embraced the humour and faced it head on. He featured in a beer commercial that had him as the prominent hero, as "Spain's Perfect Friend". The joke is taken further when you see that it is a commercial for a Dutch beer on Spanish TV. Whether Bonello realised that he was being used as source of amusement is unknown to me. Maybe he agreed to it as a way to be rid of the demons. Or he thought he could use his misfortune to his monetary benefit. He could have just wanted his 15 minutes of fame all over again. Whatever it was, it brought the conspiracy theorists out again. A couple of comments under this video infer that Bonello might have been happy to make money out of this match twice over. Again, I stress, that's a very bold accusation. The perception, unfortunately, will always remain but there was no evidence.

Whatever may have happened, it remains one of those moments that we, Maltese football supporters, can only laugh at.