Can you imagine Inter star player Zlatan Ibrahimovic, on his way to signing a contract with Barcelona, ending up in Madrid by mistake and, when Barcelona are informed of the mishap, they say that they do not know about the player and tell him to find his way back home?
Well, it did not happen to Ibrahimovic, but it happened here in Malta last Monday, obviously on a much smaller scale.
Last Monday, as I was about to leave the office at about 7pm, a man with a large training bag looked lost and disoriented as he waited at the bus stop. He was asking around on how to make his way to the Melita football ground.
As the conversation developed, it turned out that the man is Roberto Duo, a Liberian footballer who is on trial with Floriana FC.
At the time he was talking to me, he was supposed to be training with his team-mates, but nobody bothered to inform him that the session was not at the Floriana ground, but at Melita training grounds in Pembroke. So, after he made the trip from Qawra – where he is staying – to Floriana by bus, he was told that he had to make his way to Pembroke.
He caught the number 41 bus – which was the wrong bus to take if he wanted to go to Pembroke – and ended up outside The Malta Independent offices in St Julian’s. He said Floriana’s Irish coach Roddy Collins wanted to utilise him in a friendly match before deciding whether to sign him for the club, and he was eager to go to the training session.
Seeing him in despair, I phoned up a Floriana FC official and told him about the problem – and the answer I got was that he did not know who the player was. Roberto insisted on his story, and yet the Floriana official kept repeating that he did not know about him. He refused to come for the player or send someone to pick him up to take him to the Melita training ground.
A second official came on the phone and when I repeated the story, he told me to tell Roberto that the training session had finished and to tell him to go back to his hotel. At this stage, I could not help passing a few remarks about the low level of professionalism that the club officials were showing with regard to a player that they could be signing.
No wonder that Maltese football is in such a poor state. If clubs treat their players – or prospective players – in the way that Roberto was treated last Monday, then it is no surprise that Maltese football can never lift itself up from the bottom rungs of European football. As for professionalism, well, it’s better if we do not go there.
The episode ended with a colleague of mine taking Roberto from our offices to the Ferries in Sliema, from where he got the bus back to Qawra.
Yesterday morning, I called him up and he said that he had made contact with Mr Collins and all had been cleared.
Apparently, Floriana’s coach understood his plight and believed his story as to why he did not turn up for training.
Mr Collins should however tell the club’s officials to be more careful in the way they deal with players. After all, Roberto might be the right player to help them win the league for the first time since 1993.
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