The defeat against Greece in the Euro 2012 championships qualifying match last month has cost the Maltese national side seven places in the FIFA world rankings.

Malta has dropped from the 156th to the 163rd place – it is the worst position ever and, frankly speaking, there are no signs that things will improve anytime soon.

Yes, the Maltese national team played well against Greece, and the defeat was not deserved. That the winning goal arrived well into injury time was heartbreaking too.

But we must all admit that the standard of Maltese football has been in freefall for several years, and the many attempts that were undertaken have not reaped the desired results. If anything, we continue to move backwards while other countries make progress. There are few occasions when we manage to obtain one positive result, but these instances are too few and far between.

Malta’s last competitive victory was against Hungary in October 2006 and the last competitive draw was against Albania in February 2009.

It used to be said that the fact that Maltese players are restricted to local football was to blame for our poor levels of play. But we have had and still have several players who play abroad, in more competitive leagues, and yet the Maltese national side is still in the bottom rungs of European and world football.

It only takes watching a few games of the Premier League to realise that our football has many shortcomings. The football is slow, there are few players with above-average skills and overall the standard of play is low. The foreigners that are brought over to play with our local clubs are hardly any better.

The Malta Football Association has tried to introduce schemes and change formats to make the games more exciting, and possibly attract more supporters to the stadia. But these have not reaped any fruit.

There will be further changes as from next season, but there are serious doubts whether they will be able to contribute to improve the local game.

If anything, having more teams taking part in the Premier League will have the reverse effect – most probably, we will get ever more boring games as the difference between the top and bottom teams will be greater than it is today.