While Malta stumbled to a 4-0 loss to the Netherlands and a 4-1 loss to Bosnia & Herzegovina in the Ta' Qali National Stadium earlier this month, there was an altogether different mood in the cold, wind-swept Tórsvøllur Stadium in Torshavn, a few hundred kilometres off mainland Europe.
The Faroe Islands captured footballing headlines after registering two mammoth wins in their FIFA World Cup qualifiers - putting them just a point away from a play-off place that could take them all the way to the FIFA World Cup.
It's a huge feat for a place which isn't even a country, and which has more sheep on it than people.
It's an achievement which has also prompted questions locally: how is a place like the Faroe Islands, with a population of around 55,000 people, thriving in the beautiful game, while Malta continues to flounder?
The Malta Independent on Sunday investigates what makes Faroese football tick in this two-part article - the first part of which focuses on the make-up of the national teams.
The performances
The first place to start in an attempt to answer this question is to look at the performances of the respective teams.
The Faroe Islands have had a historically strong FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign. The tiny Danish territory has racked up four wins - two over minnows Gibraltar with 2-1 and 1-0 scorelines, and - earlier this month - a stunning 4-0 win over Montenegro and a shock 2-1 upset win over the Czech Republic.
The results have left the Faroe Islands sitting in 3rd place in their group with 12 points - just one beneath the Czech Republic, who occupy the play-off position in 2nd place with 13 points. Progress to the play-offs would be unlikely for the Faroese: they must face top seeds Croatia, while the Czechs face bottom seeds Gibraltar knowing that only a footballing shock of the most monumental proportions can see them lose.
Regardless, however, the Faroese campaign remains historic. It's the best showing that the territory has had in a major tournament qualification campaign: it's previous best was in the run-up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where they registered two wins (one over Latvia and the other over Andorra) and three draws (with Latvia, Andorra, and Hungary) for a total of nine points - enough for 4th place.
As for Malta, it's been a campaign like any other: no wins and just two draws which both came against Lithuania, which means that the national team sits bottom of their group.
It perhaps doesn't really come as a surprise: since Malta started taking part in the qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup before the 1974 tournament, the national team has only registered three wins - against Estonia in 1993, against Armenia in 2013, and against Cyprus in 2021.
That means that the Faroe Islands have registered more wins in this qualifying campaign alone than Malta has registered in its whole history of trying to get to the FIFA World Cup.
The story isn't much different in the qualifiers for the European Championships. There, Malta has only ever registered four wins: over Greece in 1975, over Iceland in 1982, over Hungary in 2006, and over the Faroe Islands themselves in 2019.
The attentions of countries of a lesser stature such as Malta and the Faroe Islands have more recently turned to the newly-introduced UEFA Nations League - but even here the Faroe Islands outperform Malta.
Promotion for Malta out of the bottom Division D has thus far remained elusive, with a promotion play-off against Luxembourg set for next March the closest Malta has gotten. The Faroe Islands meanwhile sit in Division C, having been promoted ironically at Malta's expense, and have maintained their place in that tier for two editions of the tournament.
All of this is reflected in the FIFA Rankings that the two footballing nations have: Malta is ranked in 166th place, while the Faroe Islands is ranked in 127th place.
The national teams
In understanding the differences between the two footballing countries, one must first look at their teams.
As far as average ages go, they stack up quite similarly: Malta's 30-man squad for this month's international window had an average age of 27, while the Faroe Islands' 24-man squad for the same window came in with an average age of 27.8.
Both squads also possess a chunk of players who play their football abroad.
The Faroese team included 11 out of 24 who played abroad, with the bulk of these playing in Scandinavian leagues. Four of these play in Denmark, two play in Iceland, one plays in Norway, and another plays in Finland. Another foreign-based player plays in England's fourth tier with Grimsby Town, another plays in Slovenia's second tier, and one more plays in Poland's top league.
In the international window last June, the Faroe Islands also called upon three more players who play abroad: one plays in Denmark, one in Norway, and the other in Iceland. They weren't part of the national squad this month.
In Malta's case, the 30-man squad also included 11 players playing abroad, with the spread being wider than the Faroese players. Jodi Jones, Basil Tuma, and James Sissons play in England, Teddy Theuma and Irvin Cardona ply their trade in France, while Alex Satariano and Matthew Guillaumier are playing in Greece. Zach Muscat plays in Portugal, Ilyas Chouaref plays in Switzerland, Paul Mbong plays in Serbia, and Kurt Shaw plays in Italy.
Malta has also called upon other foreign-based plays in the past year: James Carragher plays with Wigan Athletic in England, Luke Tabone plays in Wales - although he hasn't featured for Malta since October 2024, and Trent Buhagiar plays in Indonesia.
Jake Brimmer, playing in New Zealand, and Dylan Scicluna, playing in Australia, were both also called up but were stopped from making their debuts by injuries.
Proportionally, the Faroese squad has a higher percentage of players playing abroad than the Maltese squad does - but that's offset by the fact that the Maltese players, generally speaking, play in leagues of a higher standard.
Teuma and Cardona, for example, both play with recently-relegated teams in the French second tier, while Chouaref plays with one of the better teams in Switzerland's top tier. Zach Muscat plays in Portugal's second tier while Matthew Guillaumier is in Greece's top league.
This is also reflected in the squad's values according to the popular footballing website Transfermarkt. The website lists the total market value of Malta's squad as being of €15 million, while the total market value listed for the Faroe Islands squad is calculated at €5.38 million - nearly three times less than Malta.
The coaching
You need a strong coach to make a strong team, and this is an area which has been of consistent debate in Maltese football.
In terms of the Faroese, their coaching situation has been relatively stable, having only had three coaches since 2011.
Danish coach Lars Olsen coached the country between 2011 and 2019, registering nine wins and seven draws in 56 games. He was followed by Swede Hakan Ericson, who was previously the coach of Sweden's Under 21 national team, between 2019 and October 2024. He had a marginally better record than his predecessor, registering nine wins and 13 draws in 48 matches.
He departed his post in October 2024 and was replaced by Eyðun Klakstein - a 52-year-old Faroese coach who played and coached exclusively within the Faroe Islands. He coached several top-tier clubs in the Faroe Islands and also coached the Faroe Islands Under 17, Under 19, and Under 21 teams at different points in his career.
Since taking the post, he's been in charge for 10 games - winning an unprecedented five of them, including the Faroe Islands' four wins in this FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign.
Malta has had less stability in a coach, with six permanent coaches since 2012. A clear pattern is the Malta Football Association's preference towards Italian coaches: four out of those six have been Italians: Pietro Ghedin, Devis Mangia, Michele Marcolini, and Emilio de Leo.
The only non-Italians were Belgian Tom Saintfiet, who only lasted three games before being sacked after reports emerged that he had applied to be Cameroon's head coach, and Maltese Ray Farrugia, who led the national team for 18 games, managing just one win.
The most successful of these last six coaches was Devis Mangia, who registered nine wins and five draws in 26 matches between 2019 and 2022.
Emilio De Leo, Malta's current coach, came into the post with no head coaching experience to speak of - although he did serve on the staff of the late Siniša Mihajlović in Italy and Serbia. He has managed Malta for eight matches, registering one win (a 3-1 win in a friendly over San Marino) and two draws.
The youth national teams
It is quite clear on the basis of past results that the Faroe Islands are doing something better than Malta at youth level.
Malta's age-grade national teams have, in recent seasons, been poor.
The Malta U21 team lost all 10 of its matches in the qualification campaign for the 2025 European Under 21 championships - scoring just four goals and conceding 35, and has picked up where it left off in the qualification campaign for the 2027 European Under 21 championships: three games, three losses, no goals scored, 12 goals conceded - which includes a bad 5-0 defeat to Georgia this month.
The Malta U19 has fared only slightly better: they picked up a 2-1 win over Gibraltar but lost 6-0 to Poland and 2-0 to Turkey in the last qualifying campaign for the 2024 European Under 19 Championships. Since, though, they suffered back to 3-0 defeats to Latvia and last week two more defeats to Belarus, one with a 3-1 scoreline and the other with a shocking 8-0 scoreline.
The Faroe Islands, meanwhile, have had better fortunes at youth level.
Their U21 national team has consistently racked up a couple of wins in qualifying campaigns: three in the run-up to the 2025 tournament (two against Belarus, one against Andorra), two wins and four draws in the 2023 qualifiers (wins against Armenia and North Macedonia together with draws to France, North Macedonia, and Serbia twice), and three wins in the 2021 qualifiers (against Israel, Montenegro, and Kazakhstan).
In the currently ongoing qualifiers for the 2027 Euro U21s, the Faroe Islands actually currently top their group - though largely because they have two or three games in hand over countries of a larger stature. They have won three out of their five games so far: against Estonia, Luxembourg, and Iceland.
Is it because there are more young Faroese players now playing their football abroad? In their last match a 3-1 loss to Switzerland, four of the starting 11 play abroad: one plays with Torino in Italy, two in Norway with Ranheim and Egersund, and another with Vasteras in Sweden.
The same four played in two of their three wins in this year's qualifying campaign. In their win over Estonia, only one of them - captain Aki Samuelsen, who plays regularly with Ranheim in Norway's second tier - featured.
Four is the same number of foreign-based players that the Maltese U21 national team had in its squad for its 5-0 defeat to Georgia last week: Basil Tuma plays with Reading in England, Lucas Scicluna plays with Newcastle Jets in Australia, James Sissons was recently signed up to the Chesterfield youth squad, and Finley Ging plays with Boston United in England's fifth tier.
The Faroe Islands U19 team meanwhile is less strong: it has only registered three wins since 2012, just two of which were in competitive fixtures.
So it is clear that the discrepancy really starts at U21 national level, where the Faroe Islands are just consistently better than Malta is - even if, on paper, there shouldn't be too much to distinguish the two teams.
The second part of this analysis, focusing on football in Malta and the Faroe Islands at domestic level, will be carried in The Malta Independent on Sunday next week.