I'm getting pretty excited about the start of the European World Cup qualifiers on Sunday. Will Allardyce's England be any better than Hodgson's? How will Wales and Iceland deal with not being surprise packages anymore but teams expected to challenge for the top spots in their groups?
All fun stuff but what I'm looking forward to the most is Scotland starting off with a loss in Malta. The build up to the match has started in Malta. A new high-tech hybrid pitch has just been laid at the National Stadium, new team shirts have been unveiled and 75% of the tickets have been sold, including 5,000 to Scottish supporters. There is no doubt there will be quite the atmosphere with the Maltese supporters rising to the challenge of being out-sung in their own stadium by the visitors. I'm not quite sure the Maltese can compete with 5,000 of the Tartan Army's best but it'll be fun to watch them trying.
The Malta team is playing a friendly in Estonia on Wednesday. But they have hit a little snag. Their connecting flight out of Amsterdam today was cancelled, leaving them stranded in Amsterdam overnight. Any semi-frequent traveller will know how difficult it is to get a family of 4 re-booked on a different flight. Must be quite challenging for a group of twenty footballers and coaches and other officials. Hopefully they make it back to Malta on time.
In better news for Malta, their star striker Andre Schembri, scored his first goal for his new club Boavista in Portugal. It's quite the achievement for any Maltese player to be successful in a major league overseas. Carmel Busuttil did it in Belgium in Genk in the eighties and Michael Mifsud was almost there with Coventry a few years ago. Scottish defenders had better watch out, Andre is on fire!
I will try my best to find an online feed of the match on Sunday. If not it will be another social media experience, which I plan to turn into a bit of an experiment.
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